Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 31.2
Around the ClockThere's a man walking in the middle
of a tundra of dwarf shrubs and lichens.
There's a man walking across the desert
with other men, their faces wound with cloth
against the wind, a man walking on a field
of broken ice, a man following herds
of reindeer, a man following the dusts
of wildebeests in migration, a man circling
the moon watching a man on the surface
below scaling the white rocks, a man circling
a sacred tree, a madness of branches, wheels
within wheels hung with gray mosses.
There's a man on the savannah parting
his way through dry grasses, a man
swimming the night of an underground
river, a man in mountain shadows
traversing a pass along the ledge of loose
rocks sliding beneath his feet.
There's a man, like Moses, like Ulysses,
like Quixote, waking to walk, a traipsing
infidel, a holy seer on pilgrimage.
There's a man pulling his boat to shore,
a man crossing a bridge hauling baskets
of fish, baskets of clams, a man at midnight
walking south on a train speeding north,
a man walking to the front, a man walking
with a woman into a clearing at dusk,
a man walking down rows of prison cells,
down rows of headstones, walking beside wild
waters and through the rain-weather rising
from their fall, swallows flying in and out,
disappearing into the blind of that storm
above the roar, a man walking through
abundance, through treachery and pity,
a man walking clear through and past the death
of this moment and the next and the next.
