Long Enough
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Caught up in parallaxes of impureproximity, attracted to the matterworks
of you, the swerves of heftand heat my meathooks
must, by nature, twist to justaccommodate, how ever might
my kind resist? I haveto hook, I love
to look.
________
As long as fivemere senses of you can
obscure a halfa billion planets, I'll
be powerless. [End Page 64]
________
Eventually if pried awayby a long enough lever, or the demands
of other and one-worded lords (the mind,a room, earth with a capital, or men's own
manifestic universe), by thoughts of onesense only, or resistances to countlessness,
could I be cool again, be clear aboutthe boundaries? If then
I see the sea,which uses ships for flash,
or if I meet a mountainbrandishing its stars, or if
Orion thrusts his spear into the deepof each mind's only eye, could I
remain unblinded, or unscared?
________
Just to be freed from greed, must I be falleninto cold or solitude?
Suppose I set my sights uponthe grandest of ideas. (I fear you still
would not be spared.) [End Page 65]
Heather McHugh lives on the Olympic Peninsula. She taught at the University of Washington for thirty years, and continues to take students occasionally through the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. Her first new collection of poems in ten years will be published by Copper Canyon in 2019. It's called Muddy Matterhorn.
