Stones

I want to go
up the west coast to
Canada by train and across Canada
by train through all those "too many" according to my
grandmother mountains and down to Portsmouth,
New Hampshire where I could take a boat
to Star Island and there fall asleep
to the sound of the waves on the rocks. I would not try
to swim there - when I was 18 I only thought it had
killed me, just for a minute as I first went down
into icy brine - but I would think about it; I would not
try either to walk the rock wall between islands as I could then, but
I would see them again and think about it. Now I don't know
exactly how I would get back here from there so perhaps the
whole trip will just consist of
thinking about it. Oh I think from there by train again but
south and west, through
Indian country finally, those
empty vistas so gratifying to one
full of homeless dreams. I remember that
Navajo woman who said to me near Albuquerque, "You
have all those people and no place to put them - we have
all this land and hardly any people." I would like to see her again
too,
her friend told me "You
look just like her mother." And I could see again
those mountains named "Blood of Christ" and wonder still just how
that blood differed from my blood, if it did. Blood-red they sure
could be,
when the sun fell. I would come home with
some turquoise, not
blood-red at all.