BECAUSE THESE WORDS
a place real in the eye of the beholder,
an imagined landscape filled with flowers
with names known only in books.
Places that seem so real
I revisit them in dreams
though they might exist only
between the pages of a book,
or suspended in mid air
from the lips of one to another,
leading me to real places in the world.
The intersection of my wanderlust
is taking form in the memory
of my grandmother's unexpressed desires.
of my grandmother's unexpressed desires.
She, who raised eight children,
had no life, other than squalling babies
crawling in the iron rich mud,
children eating bugs with impunity,
and later eating their words
as they, and their children after them,
practice the hunters stance
with well aimed epithets,
forgetting that the thickness of blood
is more holy than water.
In their thirst for ammunition, they,
not realizing the enemy was within.
I imagine the breadth of history's story
when I came to realize the outrageous arrows
flew unheralded through the centuries
to find their mark within. Genetic memory.
assuaged by the knower's ink
blossoming into words.
27 March 1996 Alexander Valley
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