The Approaches

A childless, futureless road And then nothing. . . Is that it? Or start believing in a God Beyond the temporal limit Of westering skies, wide, melancholy, Uncut fields and paced-out walls As we drive towards it slowly, The house that has us both in thrall. They are gone, now, the hours of light It took to get here. Might-have-beens, Lost wanderyears. But that's alright— We are trading it in, the seen For the experienced, the car keys For the end of the journey, When distances have lost their power And the heart beats slower In tomorrow's cold, a coming weather One degree north of yesterday. High latitudes—as they say, There is nothing up here But wind and silence, passing clouds, Light diminished half a tone, A dish left out all night for the gods By morning turned to stone. So take a right, go down two gears And stay in second, where the church is And the pig farm. Only the approaches Are terrible, only the years, The getting here, which takes forever. A boy in tears, a barren crone On a bicycle, a man alone— They're waving. . . It's now or never For the final self, I assume— For the shape of the house On the skyline, the release Into childhood, and the coming home.