"The Chain"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm posting some of my work every Friday (previously here and here). Today, I'm sharing my original poem "The Chain."

The Chain

We’re migrating.
We all had cars at one time but we
seem to have lost them along the way.
Now we’re on foot.

Some of us carry spears, some guns,
I don’t know where they got them.
Most carry nothing but a few belongings,
a bag of ideas that let us set up camp, settle.
We’re walking with all our buildings,
foundations demurely pulled up like skirts
as our cities follow us in a line.
We strike and move on.

My eyes itch.
I have to go to the bathroom.
There’s music all around us but
coming from nowhere.
This journey can be measured
in distance but also in time
or neither.

Those at the front discover our destination:
by the time it makes its way to the back,
they have forgotten.
Then we forget. We take uncertainty
into ourselves like air, it sleeps
with us in our sheets.

This journey isn’t forward, it’s
peeling back like an onion, layer by layer.
This journey curls in on itself.

©JEF 2016