Mystery Farm Road

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.