Sepia-Tinted

Through flooded fields, up hills and rivers, down

mountains in mud so deep our cart wheels

stuck and splintered, at last our travels

brought us by chance to an unnamed tributary

and this town, this outpost we knew first only

as a far column of smoke over pine tops,

and the people received us and fed us, and though

their language was strange, as ours was to them,

the roads were cobbled and the dogs were tame,

and we knew by the third day we would stay,

and we burned our foul clothes: doused them with fuel,

forgot them in a rush of flame, and pried apart

our wagons for paling fences, raised walls, tarred roofs,

and told each other this was the life we had dreamed of

through weeks of rowing, months of hard portage,

and then we said less and less, and this was a comfort,

and as for the stars that had been our guides, we forgot their names

but agreed they were pretty, and we dimmed the town lamps

to give them a look, and we lit our halls with candle flames

that stuttered and bent back as we passed,

which was sad, though we could not say why,

so we took to sitting still and thinking, depending

for company on the voice in our heads, which seemed a stranger’s,

and our children grew tall in their little rooms

and we did not tell them the story of our travels

because it was no longer ours, although in sleep

our shoulders ached, and our old boats warped on the shore.