Poems January 2005
Landscape
Trepanned: in other words, my mind wanders
no further than the map I drew from memory,
marking the stone-circled embers memory makes smoke
wisps to occlude whatever arrow-line Id draw next.
Next is the legend: asterisk for tree, circle for settlement,
double dagger for ruins, circled star for fallen star,
wave of my hand for broken satellite, exhalation for
exhalation spent climbing the rise step by step toward
the form of the field, the retirement of assent.
Here the lake, here site of ambush, here fallen king.
The thistles tendencyits bent posturetoward the oracular.
The wolfs basking ruse.
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 23 Number 5, on page 33
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