West

(for Bridget and Jesse)

Direction, it so happens, is a turn-away place not-to-stand.

Pray, where do suns roll over oceans themselves?
Arms, winged with Buckminster Fuller,
fly the Earth, rolling away from light-dark seasons.
The frontier is an internal plain—rough grasses,
anise in the nostrils. West rides our goldenness home,
mapped by cowboy theologians.
In absolution of any original, of rocky sure
and whale blindness, the salt-flat marsh and
wagon-range cattle roam placeness.
Movie moons, beach cars, a woman riding a leopard-print
sand dune. Forty shades of blue and ten more hues of hay.
A first-step word stumbles further from original.
We await the dusk flash from a cave overlook in a land-locked kayak.
Young man, pray tell, where, in a benevolent world,
will you find yourself?
We’ll wait for you here.
Direction, it so happens, is a turn-away place not-to-stand.