Prologue
The trip is three thousand six hundred twenty-one miles.
From
across and up the country and through
where it turns into the smooth-paved Al-Can,
with stops at
at
and finally at the coast to smell the sea,
all the way to
and so for nine months she makes herself stay;
there are always jobs for math teachers,
or at least for substitutes –
six weeks at a stretch, sometimes, for many
of the women she replaces are young and eager
to start a family and raise their own children.
She has a son too, grown and gone by now,
and so when school lets out she too is released
to make the long trip to the land that draws her,
like a salmon is draw to the place
where he was born.
She drives it alone with her thoughts,
following the migration of the geese,
who always beat her there, for they fly
without pause sometimes, all day and all night.
For her, though, it takes the better part of three days,
through a country waking slowly to spring,
trees budding, the birds trying out their songs.
Often she stops to breathe the damp air,
to lean against the car by the side of the long road,
and hear the flocks pass by honking overhead.
She imagines there is recognition in their cries.
