Thread

The farther one travels the more the world
blends into one seam. A small gutter
in front of a wood and tin shack and inside
a woman and a sewing machine chatter away
in repair of things that can never be gathered again.
To make full restitution is an impossible dream.
Even a forced migration, even Atlantic, even Mediterranean.
Even a boat furrowing ocean to plowed field
is the final measure of a body’s desperation.
Yet it hums to buoyancy, to wish, not to the fact of ruin.
The red earth of my homeland is both wound and suture.
Nomad is the human urge, fear is the need to stay.
Word is what says, not even one of us will be forgotten.