It is plain, flat country.
In autumn it’s yellow with wheat.
Winter has a dark peacefulness,
and the lake to the north
is the wall of its world.
Considering that the earth is mostly blue,
I should have been born in the sea,
and known this land
only as a mysterious island,
and if I were a sea gull,
I could follow the wind
and see this land and then go home,
and wonder what the land was about.
Its small crevices and moody soul.
The people who watch their clocks
and time their lives.
The cities that sprawl on the featureless terrain,
and I would shudder to think
that I lived there,
in a solitary cell of plainness,
when everywhere the world
displayed the burnt eyes of deserts,
the bracelets of mountains,
savannahs and outbacks,
and Taiga and Japanese porcelain.
Nothing was conquered here,
and the beauty of the forests
that lived with sacred secrets,
were burned and cut,
and the animals slaughtered
without sound or fury.
The aboriginals with their baskets
faded away,
and the Ohio land emerged,
and I was born in its featureless world,
and remain, in love with its homeliness.
It is a place to begin.
It is a place I remember.
It is a place where poems are difficult,
and people unimaginative.
But it is home,
improbable in a world with so much sea.