I won’t tell you what literary pilgrimages I’ve triedto take, which writer’s creaky New England floorboardsI’ve stood on, trying to conjure something, whichstone houses with informational plaques I’ve loitered nearbefore I gave up trying: What I will tell youis how disappointing they were, despitehow hard I pretended to be moved, hownot up to the task I was,or am. I’m aware this is nota popular view. It’s not like I can seethe poems in the room. A writer’s roomis a room is a cold or dusty room, not like

when I went with my sister, a painter,to Cezanne’s studio in Aix: Well,you can see it, can’t you, that viewhe set down forever, everywhere:out the window, in the garden, on the road,Bam! Mount Sainte-Victoire everywhere you look,here in the present tense. Cicadas buzzing. Nearby,there were some fields so thick with lavenderwe could smell them on the breezefive miles away. Do I want ghostslike smells, so I can’t miss them?

Yes, smack me in the face, I wantto be more haunted, I want to walk around knowingprecisely what I owe my fellow livingand the dead, I want no clumsy excuses–Most days everything escapes me and I aimmy anger at how little of ourselves we leavein our rooms when we go. I keepto myself too much and still can’t give upplastic food storage, my imagination runs thin,some days I walk in the woods with my dogand it’s just silence, punctuated by wingbeats,in the dark-green gloom, just out of sight.The creek smells like wet, dead leaves.