Autogeography
       

Finally, the body is littered with landscapes,
the brain all map and diligent chart.

The three-story row houses line up like memories
over the barbershops and the gas station
along a street grooved with trolley tracks.

A town at the center of a stubbled cornfield
blinks under an unnecessary stoplight,
waits in bone for the winds to come at dark.

There are two lakes breathing in the chest,
one north and large, the other south and smaller,
freezing over each year, but still breathing,

the avenues rough with fleets of gypsy cabs,
the bus idling in front of the YMCA,
the national road with its angry pickup trucks.

There is so much soil in the creases of the skin,
feet black with asphalt, toughened by brown glass.

Finally, the wanderer will settle into one place,
laying the back's weight on the pavement.

The world will take root—
the world will be buried in that place.

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Copyright © 2015 David Ebenbach All rights reserved
from We Were the People Who Moved
Tebot Bach
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission