Leaving Home

Elisabeth Harvor
From:   The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring. Vehicule Press, 1997

Leaving home to go to
the doctor's house...

The ferry's great
paddlewheels

keep threshing
the river

into river

so that it falls
and re-falls

down

tipped
shelves of water

while sunny islands
bob by us

each one equipped
with a miniature road
and two houses

bright histories of weather

farther out in the bay
the islands are small

and then even smaller

frightened groves
of trees

riding
the darkening water—

It's endlessly deep here,
the river's

hills of trees
don't have any beaches

only their claws
backed up from the rock face

or else
dividing it

going down and down

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7 | Poem 8 | Poem 9 | Poem 10 | Poem 11 | Poem 12 | Poem 13 | Poem 14 | Poem 15 | Poem 16 | Poem 17

Elisabeth Harvor's works copyright © to the author.