Australia

by Cynthia Huntington

(reprinted from AGNI 5/6)

Your letter moves me further off center.
Another distance I am far from reaching.

How do fish keep from going mad in blue water?
They must feel how wide it is. They try not to

think of it. I think of it. It is a feeling
of being stretched between two points you can

never touch. My thoughts go to the sea and stop.
How long until I can study a map calmly?

I am counting what I have here. I feel winter
coming; I feel it coming out of me. I collect

leaves, buckeyes, bird feathers. I am greedy
for the sun. I stay out all day. I will get

what I can. The hurt wants to escape me.
It wants to come into small things, change color.

It’s not a letter to be read again. I hide it
in a grey envelope, the address turned down,

like a telegram from the Army, or a postmark
like a verdict, stamped “Australia”.

 

(AGNI 5/6)

Cynthia Huntington lives in Michigan and is an editor of the Anaesthesia Review. (Spring 1975)