Recipe For Returning
Drive an old green Buick across a frozen strait with stolen bottles of Bordeaux,
a sack of rice, a sack of beans, slabs of smoked lake fish and a box of books.
Find a cabin. Don’t get out of bed for a month. Then cut all your hair off and wander
the daylight hours until your feet bleed in your boots.
When the ice moves out in the spring it will sound like gunshots.
You’ll be awake on moonless nights and the ice will thunder and boom.
The ice will cleave and branch black and run for miles under the grainy snow.
This will fix you up.
All that emptiness, all those blue shadows of crusts and drifts.
The sky will wave rags dipped in stars and you’ll wave back.
In the spring you’ll take the ferry to the mainland.
And you’ll be back
to your self.
