Way Out Where

I want to go way out where
the sky is green where I can tear up

certainty and make irregularity
out of string and strip

the departed the muted the rare
good primary labor

the sort that does not leave
spots or streaks or dust or bits of bone

just the broken subtlety
of found cloth hard to come by

fields of yellow flower and wild thyme
and salt and pepper ‘case the witches come

where you can piece yourself
get the dust out and winter burn

rise up in the morning time
every stuff of your own all there no pattern

just over the hills a scattering
of fog and white pine and the young

mother singing to her baby
lulla lulla

rain do come down my beauty
it do come down —

Eva Hooker is professor and writer in residence at Saint Mary’s College in Indiana. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, AGNI, and Terrain.org.