The rural countryside
Has its own welcoming committee.
It has its own encyclopedia.
It has its own dictionary.
Every year I throw a parade
In my honor. Why not?
Why is family always hurting family?
Describing matters in the system.
Do they not have anything better to do?
Like make love, instead of war.
Stories about family life
Will mature you in old fashioned ways.
Sickness depends on culture.
Maturity depends on your mother.
Great poems are meant for the dark.
For night swimmers. For viewpoints.
The rape of the lock is found there.
At the end of the world.
The halo of the laughing carcass.
Ghost stories and erosion.
Birthday girls and photographs.
The dodo bird and the rhino’s horn.
Excuse my blood, my church hat.
While I visit the museum.
Fragments of summer
Ravenous village of stone –
Sadness is wasted in youth
A wilderness history of it
We are on a path walking
To meet each other on a road –
A road filled with studies
I have a wounded body
So we meet in a rural forest
Or on that sunny road –
You have a wounded body
I was scared of that vision
In all of its sacred glory
We are lovers of the Arctic Circle
If it still exists. We were family
Once. Daughters and sons.
Before we were poetry.
