Where was the last place words went hiding
before they said goodbye? My life’s a spool,
a stumbling transcript or translation
of itself among others. The early parts
clumsy, the bones of their orphaned grammar
rattling in jars. I look at the way they amber
in evening light and am dumbstruck at how I don’t
yet have their final names. When others come to me
with their catalog of needs, it’s the long sweep
of road I hear ahead: that familiar restlessness
punctuated by the thin, sharp cries of crickets.
I want a quiet room, a bed laid with linen; my head
turned to a window for want of sight of the moon—
because once I was told it’s steadfast, it never leaves.
In response to Via Negativa: Stuck in the past.