For Thanksgiving 1962

If God is willing, this
is the coming to another land,
1962, is the landing on a shore
I have never been before —
 
days and hours that come out of the mud
up and track my room, in on the windows
I can’t see out of now, as I come to fog
or from one clearing — to hell with that one
 
now — toward another one I haven’t
found. Of where I live. Time,
it is November 1962, time
done with the Army and again back
 
time ordinary and my own. And the place
I know, of Kansas, home, not
possible to know anymore, I have come
here to Massachusetts, back
 
beginnings back. And on this Thanksgiving
day another year
if there are no thanks to give
it is again to be alive
 
and yes, to go on. The rest
of myself: the plain and where
the trees still are thick,
stretching inland how far
 
I do not know, only to go
there and find.
It is past being certain
of home, of any where, until I find it,
or we would not have come here
in November and nothing
warm or human or to settle.
Only to ride the earth in front of us
 
to Earth.
 
 
[November 1962, Cambridge, MA]