Poems come from something that happened last month,
last year, 10 years ago.
This took place I don't know when
in the '70s, when Gail and I were traveling
in what was then Yugoslavia.
In this case, it's now Slovenia.
I've tried to write this poem over and over for years.
Not over and over, but maybe five times.
Over and over.
It's called "Slovenia."
"I napped, woke, napped again, and when the bus pulled over,
woke again.
Not a light to be seen, only the dark and mostly starless
sky above us.
And on both sides of the road, dark wooded walls that earlier
were forest.
You see them everywhere in the Balkans, these women.
Placid, ageless, dressed from head to toe in black.
She stood and stepped off the bus.
The driver waited.
Individual trees emerged.
They looked like shadows, and not in rows, not a path
to be seen anywhere between them.
Every so often, I see her when I'm falling asleep.
A robe of black entering a forest equally black.
And though I'm sure there had to be
someone, someplace in those woods, waiting for her,
still I gasp."