hallelujah

Our stuff's here. Far as we know, nothing broke and nothing's missing. Knock on wood. Yes, the smaller shipment from the Big Island is still in limbo, but it'll show up.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in an upholstered chair reading poems by Oni Buchanan. A new life begins, and this Oni poem seems so much the perfect poem of arrival:

The Only Yak in Batesville, Virginia

At first I spent hours gazing at the black and white horse
in the farthest pasture. He was so far away,
so tiny between the fence slats, and even then I knew
all he cared about was his mane and that his tail
was properly braided. He never so much as galloped
in my direction. Even the flies that edged
his beautiful eyes never flew into my wool
or landed on my nose. The love affair

was over before it began. I started to dream
of a dry cistern in the middle of the forest
and dry leaves where the other yaks could play
until leaves stuck out of their hair and they looked
like shrubs. In my dream they lived
in the cistern and each morning looked out
with periscopes before scrambling up the concrete walls
to search in the forest for sprouting trees.

In winter I realized that for the other yaks
it was fall all year round, and that it had to be fall,
because otherwise they couldn't roll in the leaves
to look like shrubs, and there had to be a cistern,
because otherwise they couldn't huddle in the pitch black,
and I knew then that I had forgotten
what a yak looks like, though I am a yak,
and I knew then that I had been away for a long time.