HIS TOWN
—Stephen Dunn
The town was in the mists of chaos.
—A student's typo
He wasn't surprised. What town wasn't?
Everywhere the mists of property, the mists
of language. Every Main Street he'd known
shrouded in itself. The mist-filled churches
and the mist-filled stores in strange collusion.
Nevertheless, this was where he chose to live.
Clarities, after all, were supposed to be hidden;
otherwise, no fun in the classroom or in the field.
Life? His neighbors preferred the movie versions,
loose ends tied up, mists of romance and thrill.
And sometimes he did, too.
Now and again he'd get underneath, see
snakes in among the flowers, hearts askew.
And friends from cities would report
they'd been places where the mists had risen.
You needed to look aslant, they said,
so dangerous would the real appear at first.
No safety in the universe. He'd stay put.
Besides, he liked to be in the mists of tall trees
and in the mists of what made him hungry for more.
He liked the mistiness of familiar boundaries
so he could let in, secretly, what he loved.
And the chaos? It favored no geography,
a perpetual rumbling beneath and above him
wherever he was. He had lived with it so long
it was simply the music he worked to, slept to
and woke with, in the mists of all.
___________________
—Medusa
