Search
In this waste
marked Unknown in your old geography,
even the approach rationalizational,
first mile salt desert—
out of your element—or element evaporated—
(This tent’s my home . . . )
you sleep by day
one arm flung over face
or, tent put up in rain, and
having brought just your pen—
breathless, as if invited to a bash, and late.
Go. In his urn of cast-off words
the dead man entertains.
Over bedouin laughter
you’ll catch a thump—only
a dented bucket blowing across a yard,
from the rough deck of that ship
some grandsire took to get here?
From that well another dug in wilderness?
Fluid reunions—
yearning, untravelled forebears,
yearning, travelled heirs.
Fifteen Poems and Drafts Introduction
In Celebration of Eleanor Ross Taylor