Other

1

 

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

 

Men prefer a road

Circling, shell-like

Convex and fossiled

Forever winding inward.

 

Men prefer a woman

Limpid in sunlight

Held as a shell

On a sheltering island…

 

Men prefer an island.

 

2

 

But I am mainland

O I range

From upper country to inner core:

From sageland, brushland, marshland

To the sea’s floor.

 

Show me an orchard where I have not slept,

A hollow where I have not wrapped

The sage about me, and above, the still

Stars clustering

Over the ponderosa pine, the cactus hill.

 

Tell me a time

I have not loved,

A mountain left unclimbed:

A prairie field

Where I have not furrowed my tongue,

Nourished it out of the mind’s dark places;

Planted with tears unwept

And harvested as friends, as faces.

 

O find me a dead-end road

I have not trodden

A logging road that leads the heart away

Into the secret evergreen of cedar roots

Beyond sun’s farthest ray—

Then, in a clearing’s sudden dazzle,

There is no road; no end; no puzzle.

 

But do not show me! For I know

The country I caress:

A place where none shall trespass

None possess:

A mainland mastered

From its inaccess.

 

* * * *

Men prefer an island