Friday, October 28, 2022

All You Want

A Turkeyfoot sky.



What has taken the place in our lives

Of the wind and the moon?

It's cold. It's richly lonely.


All you want is to be safe.

All you want is to be well out of sight,

On the other side of night, 

And you can't stop thinking, thinking.


Soon enough it's going to be

Another kind of adventure,

So sit still and just look at the sky,

Hoping humans will be calm

In our diminishing.



—A cento composed of lines from "Turn Up the Ocean," a final,
expansive collection of poems by Tony Hoagland (1953-2018),
Graywolf Press, 2022.