Postscript

Listen to Cate Marvin reading this poem. We sure are tired, so long the longing we undertook. It would put you to sleep to read the book of examinations, trial, and speculations. Even the cattle minded the haul we had in mind for them, lugging the same records across and back the same lands, as if we were lost in the ocean. The cry-me scarves were sold on the way, blue silk soaked with tear salt; the fire ants we played with for pain, arguing whose hands had become the numbest, lost. It is sorry, then, the haul come to nothing in the net, only more weight of pages and pages to trod with upon our backs. Though the goal was not known, we knew it would be discovered, would bloom out like hills of poppies, crossing our eyes with their red scent—though the idea, if not the goal, was always in plain-eyed view. To turn the ear like a weather antenna, risk the tamper of satellite communications, to yelp like puppies in an abandoned basket, to scream like dirt to an eye that endeavors to clean. If someday you should have the sense to find us, camped still at the place we stopped to rest, where resting took longer than any of us could expect, do not be drawn by our gypsy calls, our lonely tweaking at guitar strings, do not pause for a listen: we have nothing more to sing of you.