Westward

I’ve recently redesigned the website. Sadly, one of the things I lost were comments. Here’s the conversation that happened around this poem.

Laurence

- a breath of fresh air, reading this –

and when you get to the end of the last word of the last language you know, which feels far too soon every time for me . . .

jamiecrouse

I love it, Justin; its beautiful. Just a thought (and you may not want to edit Dan Hall) but I wonder if “language” would be better than “English”–more universal–but then again some would say tongues is a language. Anyway–I like it either way.

justin brock

I guess I’m thinking that at one point in the early history of the United States, the further west one went, the less English there was.

The Westward movement would originally have been seen as a digression from civilized to savage or from settled to wild.
In my poem, I want the Westward movement to suggest a transition from isolation to community and from synthetic to natural. Not sure I get the last one in.

There’s a bit of irony in the last stanza. The Native American landmarks referenced – Jacob’s Ladder and the cliff dwellings – call to mind Christian, and Western, imagery.

Here is the poem.

Westward

when you get to the end of English, speak
and your words will be wings
circling in summer over the canyon

when you get to the end of English, speak
and your words will smell like the shining
of sun-pollen in the hearts of daisies

the keeper of the plains whispers secrets
to the rivers meeting
beneath his shadow at the end of English.

when you come to the end of English, speak
and your words will step like dreams
up the stones of Jacob’s ladder
to the dwellers in the cliffs
through the cleft in the rock.

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Dec 1st, 2004 | By Justin Brock | Category: Poetry