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TO A POET, TO THE WEST
Richard Wilbur lives in Massachusetts and in Key West, Florida according to his dust jackets. If you set sail westward from San Diego you may find your dream of China, of the endless wall which draws the stares and wonder more foreboding more forbidden even than the city, which you visit to sate yourself of…
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THERE
She walks with a deliberateness that bespeaks years of always knowing what the destination is. Getting to the destination, she knows is far less important than having one. On occasion she would arrive at her destination and would then have no option but to immediately select her next destination, for being on one place too…
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WHAT IS IT NOW, PILGRIM?
It is far past time that I went on a pilgrimage. I’m not at all sure just what sort of a pilgrim I’d likely be. As a now Buddhist child of the late 60’s, the Plymouth Colony model clearly isn’t workable. And in my own late 60’s, now with a fused spine and creaky knees…
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WALKING
Today was downright exhausting, and my hour long walk along the river left me dripping and drooping. It wasn’t different than most days, same time, same place, and the usual 756 miles, according to my old friend Orion, who was watching from his usual perch, unseen, as he prefers it by day. When I was…
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SHINKANSEN VIEW
At first it was a checkerboard of ponds neatly arrayed, reflecting the sun, the work of man, for God so rarely plays geometrician with creation, less often still using right angles. Soon enough green blades reach up through the shirred surface, random, reaching for a sun they can never touch. It is a field soon,…
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ALOFT
She imagined what it must be like to have wings. She always wanted to be unmoored from the ground, to be free of its incessant pull, to look down on it from high above, and not with aid of contraption, just her, arms outstretched. The ground was a prison. She could move about, yes, but…
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ARLINGTON NATIONAL
As the plane slowly descends the cemetery appears through a break in the clouds. The headstones are arrayed in neatly ordered geometries, unknown to those who lie beneath, and those who water the always verdant lawns. Mausoleums cluster in a small village, from which no one ever moves, and rest comes easily to those who…
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ISLANDS
You have no sense of being on an island standing on the corner waiting for the light, caught cursing those who block the box. It is odd having to look up to see the sky, gray on this day, but here the horizon is only chrome, glass and stone. It is only from the 45th…
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DEPARTED
Catherine Camden is quite dead, so secure in her peace that her parting has faded and all that remains is her name, and that too, will soon be gone as she was, slowly devoured by the winds. The white swans on the Thames pay her no notice.
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EARLY MORNING
Early this morning as I drove through the mist that clings to Portland in March like a child’s yellow slicker, I thought of you, home, asleep on our bed, my side tidy, no faint indentation of life, and I thought of the thousands who have died to date in Iraq, who never again will leave…
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an old writer and his words 