Robert Wexelblatt

TWO VAGABONDS

Now I will go into the west and bide
on panoramic plains so flat that I
might be tricked into the vantage of the sky.
Or I might go into the south, reside
in the sweet languor of verandah, vine,
and firefly. Maybe I’ll head into
the north, up north where briskness braces you
against the sharp needles of spruce and pine.

Old dog brooding on old tricks, the rain that
falls on you falls also on that stray cat,
and is falling right now on your grave.
So why not go into the osprey’s east
where you might gravely glimpse, at least,
noble Atlantis submerged beneath a wave?

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Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction. His most recent book is a short novel, Losses.