‘Going Over’

Only a weary traveller would settle for such lonesome stones
but the day we crossed the river we knew we’d found a home.

Now I sleep between two waters, dreaming a red rock town
where nine kind mothers feed me, none of them my own.

And I see my mother coming but she is frail and gaunt.
She says: Yes, I’ve all I need, dear, but nothing of what I want.

I think I hear my father, turned from my mother’s bed,
call from his space-foam mattress: Am I already dead?

Sometimes I’m with my lover, just before the dawn,
but when I start towards him I remember that he’s gone.

When I sleep I travel, cross the river to another time,
but when I wake I’m stranded, listening to engine whine.

I dig in where we fetched up, on this limy spit of land.
The boat’s long gone that brought me. Even the bridge got burned.

I’m just a fool, incomer, stranger, borrowing these quarry stones
until some sickness, pain or danger sends me to my other home.