By Michael Harkin Arcadia In a dream, there’s a place I try to reach Persistently: I try and I try But the structure won’t allow me: The Escher stairs, the faulty signage. But I can look out at the fields beyond And they are filled with a golden light And billowing clouds, and salty breeze. I must have arrived by boat. High and Lonesome The night train whistles in the town below We live in the hills, that estate whose distance Makes its shriek into a plangent moan, better for sleep, And for conjuring bits of radio songs. In this high place, sounds barely reach us But the smell of a wildfire cannot be masked Even by the masks we wear to stave off death. Our breath is a task, a labor, an obligation. A Valediction For my friend with whom I would pass the time, time has passed. I hold the memory of her eyes, her laugh. Trees shaking in the breeze; like hands in the stele from ancient Greece. Farewell to the traveler, may you find your peace. Masonboro I have ridden the waves of time: of days and years. I have written the lines erased by the tide. To land on an unexpected shore, One that’s oddly unstable, a palimpsest. My father and I were walking—in a dream— And I pointed out something dead on the beach A horseshoe crab, perhaps, or a gull— As the tide recedes, and the dreamer awakes.
High Horse 