Poem: A Lover's Recourse (exile)

exil / exile

Even the siren, pushing routine off the road,
must travel by a highway code to gain its road.

The east may ride the prospector into the west,
but night exchanges with the day a ring of road.

The campfire dimmed the school buildings round it.
The stack of wood, kerosene-soaked, smelled of the road.

Just as the arrow flies in exile from the bow,
you promise not to think of him along the road.

He has become the small country you imagine
leaving behind. He is the country and the road.

Sea-salt tastes your blood but your nose lives on land.
That’s why Jee drinks and drives on this sign-posted road.

The road that underwrites a way out of repeat,
when you look for it, looks like any other road.

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