And skunk clamber through cover up to the lawns.
Children of moonwalkers watch from the dark door.
Here they come, shadows emerging from black ice,
Old fleece, a blur, a soft bristle sliding.
Hesitant, they gather at the edge of the clipped yard,
Stand there, alert and ancestral, waiting to speak.
Mary B. Campbell
FEAR OF TRAVEL
I'd be afraid to go to the desert,
That great ridged fingerprint
Of an indifferent God,
The land that actively abandons you
At every point.
Who would take care of me?
What if a sandstorm changed everything
During the night?
What could I make of such different life,
How could I ever remember it,
How could I tell you, afterwards?
The air was like the back room
Of a pizza shop in July
Crossed with the air of a laboratory.
The camel was like a horse
Which had just swallowed two swans.
The sounds were like paper
In a mechanical wind.
The sky was like the surface of a crucible
Full to the brim with a liquid that could kill.
There was no one there.
There was no one to talk to.
I wrote no letters because I forgot the alphabet,
