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Toward the Faraway
I travel incognito, using a name I once found
in a book of minor sorrows.
I have a longing for the sea, yet languish here
behind the wheel of a rental,
crisscrossing arid lands with many miles ahead.
A white plastic bag flaps on a thorn bush
it could act as a windsock but turns listlessly
in the breathless air.
A GPS guides my mind over a flickering map
toward an ocean that is too far away to reach today,
a place where silver fish leap in the aqueous air,
only to pause as still as stone in an ice-marbled sky.
That shore for now, is bereft of place and time
it can only be imagined through gaps in
rising walls of dust.
The hatchback seems to trundle slowly over
dinosaur bones, dry axles groan under
tired springs.
A hundred miles ahead a fish-restaurant
is getting ready to close its doors for the night.
A Motel 8’s neon lights flicker in a sea spray.
On an unseen shore, snow crab dance and sing
like sirens in the rolling surf.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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