Mystery Farm Road

Gregory Djanikian

You don't know how you've gotten here
what accidental turn on the road you took
while thinking hardly of anything

but here you are suddenly at a river
shaded by black willows on either bank,
the water dark and indecipherable,

and it is this river, you are sure,
that ran through the book you read one summer
as a boy in Alexandria

when the plains of Kansas were as far away
as you are now from your childhood.
And you feel a certain dizziness

as you see the railroad tracks running
along the river, and the small bridge
you've kept inside you all these years,

and the red barn on the other side
with its silver roof shining
like a vision of America.

How sure you are that the freight train
on its way west will soon pass through here
sounding its long plaintive whistle

or that the school bus you've always
wanted to ride through the waves of grain
will appear over the crest.

The book in your memory is riffling
its pages, whispering to you
though you can't remember the beginning or end,

only the farm, which is before you,
and a dog howling at the passing trains,
and a boy standing by a river,

and now another boy in Alexandria
on Rue Ahmed Shawky, reading a book
and mouthing the words huckleberry and harvest

that will cast a spell on him
for years, and that boy is you,
and the boy by the river

baring his calves under the black willows
is also you, look at-him wading in, throwing
handfuls of water to the sky.