Tuesday Poem: The Wayfarer

The Wayfarer : Odysseus at Dodoma

Acorns lie strewn with old leaves, thick

as years beneath the shadow of spreading oaks

where an old woman stoops, picking up sticks

that are no more or less twisted than she, binding

them onto her bent back, and watching with one

bright, blackbird eye as the wayfarer approaches,

an oar balanced across his knotted shoulder, his eyes

narrowed between deep seams, as one who has looked

out to numerous horizons and seen wonders: the moon’s

twinned horns rising from a twilit...