You’ve Named So Many Places Home
By Lindsay Wilson
From the new collection The Day Gives Us so Many Ways to Eat
Frost took its last bite
a week back. Now you drive
out to wander the dry lake
in your old shirt. This wind
a cool sickle in the open
country the wild horses sweep
through. Out here you cairn
your thoughts and thoughts
and thoughts, so much sand
and salt to sift through,
so many low places
in need of snow melt, so many
paths lacking a marker. You’re
not even a minor character
from a myth. Your only story’s
a road atlas that leads you
to this dry shore of cobbled
river rock where a toad
frees its mouth of winter,
which sounds like hardwood
rubbed together. You wander
all night lifting up the gray stones
to find only craters left
in sand—and still toad song,
and this breeze through the winter
grass that you call tinder.
The world slips its little shivs
inside you like this: nettle
and splinter. But sometimes
a toad’s just a toad, so stop listening
for another song. This is it:
the car static along the highway,
and the lights necklacing the night
together, each dull stone
on its chain.
Lindsay Wilson is an English professor at Truckee Meadows Community College where he co-edits the school’s literary journal, The Meadow. This poem is from his new collection, The Day Gives Us so Many Ways to Eat. Poems from this collection have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Fourth Genre, and The Missouri Review Online Poem of the Week.
Photo courtesy of Lindsay Wilson.