Do you not sometimes want to just leave
the city you’re in, to push off
in a raft you have made of your daybed—
white cotton sheets to the rising wind,
the rope of your dreams loosening
mortise and tenon joints from the four-
legged anchor that fixed your berth
all these years: one same returning
address, the one always at home to pick up
the pieces, return them to the frame
from which they’ve fallen or come loose,
she who’s asked to pay ransom after ransom
for those who left a long time ago,
not always knowing how much it costs—
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.
For what it’s worth, I had not read this when I posted my erasure. We were both writing about sailing beds at the same time! What are the chances?
Wow! Perhaps our bed-vessels are part of a flotilla. :)