In a time of faint beasts, no room
is left in the boats. With thin hands,
we huddle sheep and dip a hundred
reeds in mud. The nets wheel away

so often now, sinking though days
poured furious over threshing feet.

As though dared in a foreign tongue
to knot our sleeves, we swim through

broken oars, shout off slender days.
Snakes may cling to trees, and men

tear at bread, but the sky stays hinged.
Only heaven is full of furniture.

We harness ourselves over and over,
wherever hope is a yellow shore.


About this poem
"After having a child, my mind was so fractured that I could barely form a sentence. I began writing again by first making erasures from an old book of adventure stories. 'Nomad' grew from those fragments of language, drawn together like iron filings, as I struggled with the difficult necessity of remaking one's self and one's community, again and again, to create change."
-Robin Beth Schaer

About Robin Beth Schaer
Robin Beth Schaer is the author of "Shipbreaking" (Anhinga Press, 2015). She teaches at Cooper Union and The New School in New York City.

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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 Robin Beth Schaer. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate