Some days the words pass us,
cars loaded with vacationers.
We are not going where they are going.
Soon as they top the hill
we’ll be on the lost road again,
shouting once, then listening,
kicking a stone towards
anything like a tree.
Then the first language crawls back
into the ears, humming.
A twig scratches two words
in damp red earth:
NO THOUGHT.
I’m looking for cedar stumps,
a black calf in a blue field,
anything to report
that has nothing to do with my life.
I’m looking for the rusted skillet
hunters left hanging on a branch.
Years after they sighed in firelight
the tree claims their old iron
as another natural arm.
~ from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
(Far Corner Books, 1995)
