photoart: ralph murre
Going Back
by
Marc J. Frazier
Can a chair hand made from poplar make me whole?
We scour for the one-of-a-kind, crafted with the visionary’s eye.
Spirits reach out in Lick Creek, Nauvoo, New
Harmony .
At dusk, we join deer drawn by trust into open fields—
no moment more vulnerable than when one stares, waiting.
I scent out a psychic, who will know me as placeless, know
me by smell.
None materializes as we dodge bats outside our cabin,
many versions at home in us.
We drive deeper into summer. Signs along dirt
lanes:
Half Day Hollow, Quarry Heart, Clover Dell.
Time has gutted roads, our memory—that farmhouse on Inverness Road
I join your search for a long-ago lover’s home.
Each looks at me like the Tarantula Arms where Blanche lured
her prey.
Between fields of corn and beans, it is easy to forget—
mind blank as the anonymous face of an Amish doll.
In this country, now and then are the
same,
women so calm I want to lie down, sleep like a baby
before them, sit and work something with my hands,
eyes grazing prairie, until it and myself are perfect.
~ first published in Spoon River Poetry Review
