Sport 32: Summer 2004
Tom Weston — The Unprepared Mind
Tom Weston
The Unprepared Mind
The western island is furthest from land,
a place of shrubs and grasses, a holy place devoid
of adultery. The women fasten their clothes
with the bones of seabirds. With such things
they can soar at will. The neck of goose
is a chaste shoe, a lightness of feet, rising over
the marbled expanse of sponge and moss,
like flying. These things have been seen.
The boat returns. For them, the first journey.
One awakes, in the light of morning, at land
wholly new to her, the same ocean, same rocks,
a familiarity utterly foreign. How the shrubs
have become as large as buildings, higher even.
Trees, she is told. And she is amazed,
they grow to such a height above plants and
they hold us when we walk in them.