Page 129 of Wayfarers

in the yard and makes out with her living Ken doll

and doesn’t call her daughter who could be anywhere

on God’s green earth, dead in a ditch

for all she knows, and when we pull up finally

to the post office where I can pick up

the credit card I use to spend her money (don’t you know

that I know I’m a hypocrite?), that’s when I realize

that I’m back to not seeing anything at all.

Knox Hometown

A nostalgic haze clouds Sylvie’s eyes

as we pass the unspectacular places

woven into the fabric of her history; and I can’t

help but taste that strange flavor of loss

of something never possessed.

We treated the idea of a hometown as spitting

on humankind’s noble nomadic birthright.

All the ills that now plague us, we said often

(because that’s how you convince yourself of something),

the heart disease, the high blood pressure, the cancer,

the chronic pain, the addictions, the stress, the depression,

the anxiety, the greed, the selfishness, the violence—all of it

caused by forsaking our wandering

nature and staying rooted to places.

After all, weren’t the first humans

roaming hunters and gatherers?

Do we presume to know better

than they did?

Which always made me wonder

what early humans knew that we didn’t,

that made them trade in chasing mammoths