So Many Miles from Home

So Many Miles from Home

(“From the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me up onto the rock that is higher than I.” Psalm 61:2)

The horizon kept falling away the closer I came to
a new habitation. There were thoughts like mosquitos,
telephone wires draped across my existence,
curio shoppes boarded up since the 60s,
various buttes and razorbacks and gorges
and gray rivers knifing through the red clay
that left everything on hold. I had been here before.
But I could not place the name.
It seemed so far from where I had begun,
and farther still to my destination. I was
not
unlucky. I was not lost.
I was only miles from the end of the earth where
ships used to fall off.
I imagined the night filled with coyote howling,
I felt the warmth the earth still carried. The grass was
cool on my feet,
the dirt was warmer. There is no language here,
no signs to mark the way. I had heard there were
devils
along the road
but no one asked me for directions.
They may have climbed behind the rocks for the night,
they may have set me up for failure.
I don’t believe that, though;
I know my own behavior. Although I may have
welcome an imp or two
just for the conversation.

I stopped not far from where I started
and so my sojourn began. I stayed alone, though
I had not planned it that way.

Across another vast night the icy moon reminded me
that, sooner or later, I would hear a voice,
revamped, renewed,
an original version of
the first of me and the quiet divinity
that speaks to me so many miles from home.