2 March

This journey is nearly over now

though we talk of the next trip whenever

we are travelling, whenever we are not.

These hands that grip the steering wheel

are restless to create, to find the stone hidden

in the matrix, to give words to the quality of morning

light through a thin fog on all the colors of ice plants.

These hands that grip the steering wheel ache

to grip a drill, a pen, and that is why we eventually return

to the place where the solder is, where the envelopes are,

where we have a chance at a decent night’s sleep.

Like the planet our wheels are travelling over,

we are hurtling through the dark in circles,

around and around some idea of home

we never reach.

1994 (Highway 101)

Getting restless

1996 (Coos Bay, Oregon) I feel so fortunate, so ready to be surprised. I even considered Texas briefly this morning as a place where desert and ocean are close together.

2009 (Tarnow, Poland) Is there a university in Galveston?

2010 (Kep, Cambodia) Heck, there are three universities in Kampot. Could I do a Ph.D. in the field?

Unsettled

2011 (Siem Reap, Cambodia) This time around I have to go before I am restless, before I am quite ready. People here call the place where I am going “home,” thinking that the United States means the same to me that Kampuchea means to them. Western Massachusetts, where I am going, does mean something to me, something good, but it is also where, eight and a half years ago, fresh from Asian Russia and its shifting shortages, I stood in front of 22 varieties of hummus – I counted – and could not choose.