(Notes on) A Suburban Landscape

Where dwelling is a mode

Of citizenship

 

Not self

Not text / landschaft

Because the world

Has been always

Made even not here

 

But the proprietary between-places

That poetry occupies

 

‘Filling [one]’—like Lewis or

Clark—‘with vague cravings

Impossible

To satisfy’

 

Privacy

Beyond the formal

 

Supervised

Without authority

 

The daft all-over metropoles

And their back-

Ground of ordinances

Gridding the rural

Mile square mile

 

Mostly what we notice mostly:

Slightly interesting events

Things to be scared of

Persons with dogs

Taking the place

Of reference anxiety

It’s true:

 

If the way through

Were not also the way in

We would be lost

 

Taking Turns

Soon I too will

Carry my string

 

Into the wilderness

Without

 

Useful language

Or handsome shadow

 

I know change

Is not easy

 

But I resent

The silence

 

My body makes

Space around it to live in

 

To have an ideal

When I get back there

 

To the terror I hope

That song

 

You used to sing

When you

 

Thought I wasn’t

Listening still

 

Has the old

Stardusted magic

 

Eric Rawson

 

Eric’s work has recently appeared in a number of periodicals, including Ploughshares, Agni, and Denver Quarterly. My book The Hummingbird Hour was published in October.

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