No, This Can't
be the Place

"No, this can't be the place, but it must be
the road that leads there, always beginning
when morning is slow and hazy, suffering to
get somewhere..."  – Angell, from "The River Has No Hair to Hold Onto"











It's always true that your day could
start with a long drive past the grocery lot
you want to see if every last stall is full
and can see by the packages of toilet paper
walking out this won't be your day

because it is right there, always at the crosshairs
of your go to anchor store
and the highways a thousand feet away
that the woods sit somehow empty,
bombarded by spring detritus, that temptation

reigns, that somewhere out on that long trail
that cuts through the marsh, past the refinery
that mills the stone from the bluffs,
there is one bicyclist brave enough to live,
and right now feels the cold wind tickle her eyelids.

Yesterday I admit. I had my moment.
A ghost of self, the real you, something
that knows something of the ancients,
drove straight past the auto doors of grocery
and found itself at the edge of bluff.

I snuck out of this car. Houses moaned nearby.
They live inside said dream of escape.
How dare the bluebird sing, duck and weave,
my little blue frisbee, beautiful as a word,
alive, honing its color off a drab pallette

that it all came alive; kids' eyes along the moss.
Thank you green blanket, thank wind
creeping the shifting of the misplaced cedars,
thank you darkish knoll where time reads.
Thank you to this wind-swept rock I climb

at the top of the ridge where the eagle flies
and knows it as a planted fractal in the mind.
You get your toilet paper and stock it in the hutch.
Someone inside me leapt out cried dry.
Always suffering to get somewhere else.