LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

Day ends/night begins. He is in the backroom of a jazz club and talking to the owner, an acquaintance. He loves the magical incantation of the anonymous musician and is uplifted by the thought that, he too, is anonymous and filled with magical incantations. The acquaintance is explaining a trip that he's planning. The poet listens but, as well, his mind drifts off to places he wants to travel. To the Cameroon's, to the Shetland Islands, to the Caucasus Mountains. The poet is convinced that travel is good but it is wasted on the majority of people.

First, a man must teach himself to walk his neighborhod and be stimulated enough to write many books about what he sees and feels. Then he is ready to travel to other lands.

Of course, a woman needs to do this as well. But, the woman has a greater capacity for imagination and so less need to root it to some fixed spot. She wanders the world of her mind without moving an inch.

And when they see the horse gravely ill at the side of the road do they know what to do?

And do they fill with the thoughts of those who hate them seeing as they pass through the fields like invading armies who dream of the hearth back home? And gardens to honor the dead.

"It is like a tree," he said, "comes up and nothin' is goin' to stop it."

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