I summoned Christopher Columbus.
At the hour of the wolf,
He came out of the gloom
Looking a little like my father.

On this particular voyage
He discovered nothing.
The ocean I gave him had no end.
And the ship – an open suitcase.

He was thoroughly lost – I had forgotten to provide the stars.
Sitting in the dark with a bottle in its hand.
He sang a song from his childhood.

In the song the day was breaking.
A barefoot girl
Stepped over the wet grass
To pick a sprig of mint.

And then nothing -
Only the wind rushing off with a screech
As if it just remembered
Where it’s going, where it’s been.

~ ~ ~

I’m just starting to read some Charles Simic, a poet I have always heard of and seen referenced but never read. As the back of his Selected Poems 1963-1983 informs me, he is “critically recognized as one of America’s leading poets,” so. I like his brief, quiet style, each word precise and used for maximum effect. I think about how long-winded so many poets can get in trying to explain a thing, and then over-explaining it in the end, and then I look at the fourth stanza in this poem (“In the song…”) and how exquisite and simple it is. “A barefoot girl stepped over the wet grass to pick a sprig of mint” is so close to an absolutely perfect sentence. Beautiful.

P.S. In classic Half-Price Books form, I discovered when I came home that this book was filled with little penciled-in notes. At the end of this poem, underneath the last line “Where it’s going, where it’s been” the note-taker had written past=future. Haha. Zen-like and insightful!