Poetry of Issue #7        Page 2

The Wrong Season

Winter enshrines the absence
of negotiable color. Trekking
over the Peterborough Hills
of Thoreau’s far-off gaze,
I count my steps to a thousand
and then another thousand.
I picture my abandoned carcass
discovered by hikers next summer,
a tatter of wool and bone.

At home in your homogony
of wood heat and dozing cats
and books you can read in sleep,
you count your steps to ten
and then another ten. Distance
doesn’t embrace and cuddle you
the way it does me when thinking
of Li Bai wandering China’s
dusty roads and serious rivers.

He never earned a living
despite some favor at court
because he never held his tongue,
even with his life at stake.
I could have been as reckless
if I’d had the steady hand
of the expert calligrapher.
Then even you would admire me
for a moment or two of bliss.

Instead, my clumsy holograph
scrawls behind me in the snow.
Some people might confuse it
with boot-prints. But seeing it
raw on paper they’d realize
that I’ve tracked myself all over
landscapes and pages equally
illegible, leaving only one
useless but indelible clue.

  William Doreski