Seven Nights at Home in April, and the Rest on the Road

DOH-GirlOnSubway
photo from unsplash.com

In August 2013 my friend Alex Beeken and I started a daily poem exchange where, each day, we’d e-mail each other an original piece. We’ve kept up the collaboration, though the deadlines have relaxed somewhat; nevertheless Alex’s friendship and poems have been a constant in my life over the last 2.5 years. I wrote him many versions of this poem while spending 6+ months of the year on the road. This is the best version of it, I think.  

To read more of the Daily Poem series, click here.

 

5.3.14
I spent seven nights at home in April
and the rest on the road
in the dry dry canyons of the west-southwest
where the sun shines dark on crow wings
and braided hair

but I don’t know the names of the plants
or people there, who find red flags in how I walk
and there was snow in Flagstaff and the
Phoenix sun burned me, and the Bay dusk
drew a jewel-like path down to the Farallons;
I flew ocean to ocean in just two days and found
there were dolphins on one side
and tears on the other
and the tulips were scarlet in New York, crimson …

I think I don’t have a home anymore, except
for these poems I write you.
In these hours of lassitude and introspection
on a flight someplace, somewhere over the Midwest.