When You Get Far Enough Away

when
you
get
far
enough
away
you'll
be
on
your
way
back
home.
--tom waits


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What You Have To Get Over/

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line
a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning "to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,"
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
"that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight." If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot
to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-strung rifles,
warned of the likes of you.

--Dick Allen
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Marsh Butte
south rim from outside Slate Canyon
Vesta Temple
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using pennies to consult the I Ching
rider in the rain