aias

[and-saw-nothing]

january hendecasyllabic

it occurred to me as i drove the coastline

(my worst fear in the tilted rearview mirror)

how this would have seemed to my mother absent

always up for a long and winding road trip

better if she could ask all sorts of questions

(classes girlfriend or internships if any)

now all silence in my faithful car regina

driving back to the snowy shore of waban

where i sat before, unmatriculated

gazing out at the lake beside my mother

who said, “emily, if you came to school here

if you found yourself down-and-out or homesick--

sitting here beside the lake with its pine trees

you might find a place free from all the problems

which accompany flourishing adulthood”

this i think alone in the car ride northward

aching all over for my mother absent.

[and-saw-nothing]

i wish i could bring you there there's a hill and it is the only hill for miles between the two ends of a--barrel a barrel tapped at two ends but they've been trying to take our water for years, god damn son, remember that

they said the water was magic--it could heal you of your physicality or mentality (if it's both you're out of luck, son, the sanitarium can't help you) but walk up the serpent's creek and almighty you're made well perhaps my problem was that i disregarded such sage advice there's a hill and it is the only hill for miles at the top there's a tower and at the top of the tower everything falls away and you know they say the devil himself comes here at night to look at the stars and wonder why god made him like this