the boy walks me to the near edge of the purple horizon

                      past the last of the strip malls
past the dancing rebels        the food trucks        the penny-saver girl

keys bell his belt loops and pockets
                                   keys jangle his necklace   castanets
             in his small calloused hands

                                                          the boy walks with me
toward bubble-roofed aluminum trailers and a horizon the color of plums

             keys sprout from the dirt at our feet
the way it used to be with clover

                      I don’t understand all the keys   so I ask

the boy squats to collect what the dirt has offered

                      who can know what they will open?
                      the keys have flimsy rings and illegible labels
they all look the same     though some of them are different

                      This looks like the key to my mother’s car.
             A church key! The office? 

the boy collects keys from the shady earth
                                              the way we used to collect chanterelles

              This might be the key to my house. 

at the near edge of the belligerent horizon the boy turns a key over twice
             before he slips it in his pocket

then he tosses a ring in the air the way we once tossed tangerines