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The Soloist I started out, my bright canoe (red crayon bobbing on a pond among cow lilies)— and I paddled toward the outlet where the stream half dies in moss and pitcher plant, then portaged to a logger’s road. I dragged the children for a while in a kind of travois (two crossed poles, an Indian blanket)— they’ve dropped off. The crows still hover overhead with their promiscuous omenings. Now, in between the liftings of the clouds, I edge through scree and slippery rocks, uncertain ankle bracings, roots eroded like too-much rehearsed fine gestures excised from a play. The river waits. I have my set directions, my own map, but sometimes wish my going were a matter of importance to— some what? As Nancy said, “I write to please myself but you, you seem to want an audience” (as if my free fall were not free without a paralleling eye). But there’s a light on the long lake, as if it were a tunnel, shaft to inconclusive voyagings. To go this far and not go further would be shame. The Poetry of M.Travis Lane / 71 I should have left a message, though. Launched in completed privacy, I left no markings in the log book of the world. Yet I go on. 72 / The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand ...

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