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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