Island
Published in Poem Of The Day
I took the night train there,
never dreaming.
To cross the straits
my boxcar crept onto a barge-there was screeching,
several tremendous thuds,
then with a growl
we sailed.
I was already half-awake,
anxious for a volcano, neolithic shrines,
islands to explore
off the main island...
At my stop,
early morning's tarnish
fell on a shuttered newspaper stand
and torn campaign posters.
A child playing near a livestock car
sang about a weapon
detonated in another nation,
another hemisphere.
From the station
and the song,
I walked up the mountain road
to a garden where grizzly men with camera phones
greeted me, sleep still
in the corners of their eyes,
bougainvillea around their tents.
I was to be eternalized
and therefore loved.
They waxed my nose
and powdered my nether regions.
After oatmeal and coffee,
I was Jupiter's-
his bardash, his
Ganymede, ningle, ingle,
trug-bracing
against a Doric column.
I felt numb a night later as rosemary blew through the lava fields.
About this poem
"This speaker, seeking renewal, takes a journey from continent to island, train station to campsite. And yet it also feels as if he crosses over to some mythic, self-absorbed world where he seeks out violation, and the truth of his condition throbs: He is alone."
-Greg Wrenn
About Greg Wrenn
Greg Wrenn is the author of "Centaur" (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). He teaches at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, Calif.
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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.
(c) 2015 Greg Wrenn. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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