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Modes of Motion


by A. Pseudonym


In Delphi, no oracle, I 
was driven, until I
began to drive myself
it was out through green or tawny fields and 
up and over little ridges
where the thin trees are growing thick

Then, next door in Bourbonnais, it was time
to lounge in summer vans, passing up to Wisconsin woods
Eau Clair and Iron Mountain
where it's cold even in July, and I
remember the music I played on old pianos
and the voices that sang with my fingers

Cairo - and Jerusalem and Damascus
and Istanbul, red-roofed on the straight
and Sinai where you discover the sun
and Galilee, which spreads out like spring
and the beach dogs of Dahab and the cave of the saint in the desert
to get there we hitchhiked and took risks in our heads
we let fly our heads out the windows, and were ignorant

Toronto, you lovely bridge of mine, I
trudged in your snow for a book and a drink
content both to leave and arrive, whatever the means,
while the talk was like scotch on the tip of my tongue
and everyone was at home in my brain

And then Korea, the new soul, where I 
freely bumped and shoved, where I
stumbled and slept and loved, where I
saw an ocean drained and filled
at the flats of Saemangeum
and flew back to America on reworked wings

Now in Portland, I ride.
In the mornings coming home
with the sun at my back getting ready
I glide and huff toward Willamette, and
after Sellwood am so pleased when I see it
the city lining the ridge with expectations
the rowers keeping silence in the current
two cats on the tracks, fed by strangers
sometimes I curse the wind against my face
but when I get home I find I was glad
of the resistance
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