True Meridian

Where I wanted to go, years ago, seemed so far away:
a dream, a fantasy even, in the blue distance.

Not now what might be purchased, what comes with
a ticket, that place of no return in the blue distance.

All that glitters isn’t a rhinestone seam on a fishnet
stocking: the long hallway beckons in the blue distance.

And the hills will be there, but that city to which
you dedicate songs has receded in the blue distance.

This is the way it is for exiles, for poets, for lovers
who want to keep something pure in the blue distance.

For instance: that parapet where you leant as a child
to watch boats in the harbor, in the blue distance.

Spirits distilled from the lowly potato, the unassuming
birch: waters that have traveled from a blue distance.

Have you changed? and how? ask compatriots. What they mean,
really, is: have I also traversed the same blue distance?

On the eve of the lunar year I walked about with a saucer of salt,
a handful of augurs— Talismans to ground me in this blue distance.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Lay of the land.

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