Poetry | June 01, 2010

Roadless vehicle: means that every

instance is a juncture, that every

path branches always-and in three

dimensions. This is the burden

of untethering wholly: all planets, all

places have equal claim, anywhere

become everywhere. Once I put

roots down on a world in the most

literal sense: slid with my index finger

row after row of seeds into nearly

granulated soil: on all fours, palms

and knees roughening, darkening.

I crawled the field’s length beneath

that planet’s triple suns, saw at equal

spacing the nearly translucent cones

burst from the ground. And soon

how they uncoiled into spears.

There was no reason for the gladness

this occasioned in my heart, no cause

to adore the line after line of them,

that my hand seemed to raise them

higher and higher from the dirt, each

a marionette made to pull itself

up to full height. I think of them now,

looking out a window of this ship:

panning the scattering of stars,

themselves like seeds indexed into

the black loam of space. There was

a field that was my home, a world

I understood in the long silences

of its dawns. Now there’s this:

stars thick and old as fire. In all

their history, none have cracked

open, no golden thread of roots

unwinding beneath them.