Monday, August 26, 2024

Foreign Land

 

 


Foreign Land

 

still wandering     in foreign land

tattered map in hand    someone else’s journey

or was it mine    and I am here     again

tracing routes     seeking     safe places to bide time

compass whirling where there is no magnetic field

wind spiraling rather than blowing West to East

the way it is supposed to

 

white-knuckled     standing     at precipice

of knowing I should step out of my cave

yet     I plant my feet     and peer into the darkness behind me

as I always do     when I revisit this place

 

dead flowers gripped     because I can not lay them down

wisps of yesterdays dressings     raggedy with wear

barefooted       stepping on stones

knowing I could once trip lightly

to some safe shore     ribbons waving bravely

 

shores are being swallowed     by whip and lash of sea

that burgeons like bloated great whale    and I am a woman

swallowed      if I go too far into salty places

I am frozen     like woman turned to pillar of salt

because I have no direction     as to where you are

 

this refuge     where language is babble

orchestrated by a great angry god

shooting at ducks at circus sideshow

that have no way to break free of tracks

that always destine one in his dark sight

no safe place to be when there is a quarter to be had

in pockets of little girls who want biggest prize

 

oh      cursed be any fascination with fairy tales

about heaven and hell and devils and gods

and chosen life down here as if by chance

when it was always part of a script     sad and sorry

where wheat falls short and weeds grow abundant

and green fellows decry loss of breath and bone

of waterways and cross ways and byways

that lead us none else but to circle’s beginning

 

this is foreign land     drug from death’s bosom

set upon rock steep cliffs of someone else’s mountain

where I have burrowed in to wait

for crack of earth to lay open some sense of reason

for standing here     hand to brow

looking for wings     or a thesaurus

so I can understand     and make sense

of the senselessness of putting one foot

in front of the other

 

©Carol Desjarlais 4.13.21

 

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