"Follow the road," he told me

as if I ever knew the way before

but from up here,

it was easy to inhale euphoria

and exhale fear.

"You signed up for this," I told myself-

the scaling of forever distant mountains,

the treacherous crossing of rapid rivers,

the barren places without

false promises, dashed hopes, half-truths.

We spoke sometimes of crosses and temples

and tattered huts where one time Indians lived

as if these were worlds we walked in once,

as if these were things we knew in pasts,

sewn up now like mended dolls we still carry.

New York State as a map on my bare back

lining up and down the borders of who we were

some wildflowers we share on both sides of the mark,

both sides of the grass and the green, the ether of us-

it catches the air and never lets go.

I always think it is this brambly path to you,

but then,

everything is when I look into your eyes,

God, they kill me inside with tiny love deaths,

I close my eyes in the sharp of the pines

to await you barefoot and naked in my arms-

bliss there on the banks of the Hudson.