Farsickness

rough translation of fernweh (Ger.): the opposite of homesickness

Imagine a love turned out
as bread best cast

to the rivers, feedings
for smaller, far-flung things—

fire-flights of stillness,
forms alighting, then airborne,

until the breeze begins
to feel like hunger,

the wayward sweep of desire—
for the holy wheel

rotating foot, breath, and earth,
the pilgrim’s chaff,

frayed and heliocentric,
in need of distance

as a horizon of prayer
to both call and receive.

Published in Mapmaking (BkMk Press/New Letters), 2010, and TriQuarterly, 2007. Reprinted in Verse Daily and Poetry Daily in 2011.