How do you tell little boys
how far is far?
Why planes rumble
over half an earth?
Why sound becomes white
after an hour?
To go see NeiNei, Nancy, Johnathon,
in Portland,
where the sun falls pink
in the Pacific.
I will not see them for twelve days.
Only voices on a phone.
Voices over prairie and ridges,
yellow dust,
the Cascades,
gloomy and threatening.
Papa calls from the featureless
geography of Ohio,
counting moments of existence,
the miles of time inside me.
I may head east to New York, to
the crackle of lights and barges.
A few days,
when where I go
doesn’t matter much,
collecting shells,
throwing stones.
They’ll come back,
and I’ll come back,
from the edge of the continent,
a far, far place to have been,
in a heart
that holds things
tightly to itself.