Less Than, More Than
By David Rivard
Where am I going today
if I'm going anywhere at all
without my soul,
that bird with its unreadable, unheard name
having wandered off again,
convinced that it is more than just a word—
do we travel far from each other today?—
me in my pre-owned Mazda
with my radio full of wasps' nest news,
my Peshawar & my Rupert Murdoch,
all my guilty Murdochs—
my destination
like a homestead made of
fallen maple leaves,
the three leaves that form a tipi
tipped together
by a 5-year-old's hands,
a dwelling place,
where if I wanted to
I could rest my human rights
while my soul
travels far from its base, lost for a while
on its own highly privatized trip,
the idea of living forever
an idea that is not an eternity at all
for my wanderer
but a wish the bird has
to fly brocaded by herself
within the borders of a tapestry,
far from some witch queen's cackle,
far from that witch
who has disguised herself as a sparhawk
woven out of dark thread
by a Flemish peasant's hands—
how far is too far, you ask?—
a little foolishness goes a long, long way, I'd say;
a lot drops dead
in its tracks.
Copyright Credit: David Rivard, "Less Than, More Than" from Standoff. Copyright © 2016 by David Rivard. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: Standoff (Graywolf Press, 2016)