Walking Home Across the Island


by Jack Gilbert




Walking home across the plain in the dark.
And Linda crying. Again we have come
to a place where I rail and she suffers and the moon
does not rise. We have only each other,
but I am shouting in the rain
and she is crying like a wounded animal,
knowing there is no place to turn. It is hard
to understand how we could be brought here by love.



Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Winner of Best of Memphis in Memphis Flyer
for 7 Straight Years

Sherbert learned how to stand up by herself while I was on spring break, and when I was cleaning the bathroom I heard her gurgling and cooing in the hall and had to go hug her. 2 weeks with no baby is a long time.

anyhow, she pulled herself up and was standing in front of me, sort of wobbling between her wide planted leg, and then looked and me and grinned...

and took a step towards me.

the first time I read my name is Asher Lev I was 12 or so. since then it's been countless others, the willow tree, the fortress of solitude,hundreds of stories. all of them pushing me to one place.

where I want to be when I grow up has always been easier than what I want to be.

the anonymous come out at night and autograph the walls. here I am. I saw this. look at it. there's so much less anomie when one's name is embedded in others' optic nerves.

cast iron fences keep the trash cans from running away at night.

the korean grocery on the corner has better prices than the schnuck's back home.

stairsteps and peeling paint and cherubim perched on the rooftop corners.


never manhattan. never any longing to mingle with the sort of people who would spend a thousand dollars on shoes. no starstruck searching for certain faces. never a pull toward tiny pretty food or 10 dollar martinis.

but brooklyn. where I always thought I'd end up but never really believed it.

I'm here. it's like coming home after a 15 year absence.


I don't know how I'll be able to handle going back to Memphis after just two nights and a day.
I guess I go back and work my ass off to get out of debt and save up enough to start doing what I wanted to all along.


it's snowing.

a couple of exmases ago...



there's my mom and dad.

they totally rule.

thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.
thank you.

We had all wanted the simplest thing, to love and be loved and be safe together, but we had lost it and we didn't know how to get it back.

It's been almost a week since I had any solitude, any time to sit alone and think and read. Got home from school and made a sandwich and curled up in bed to read Bastard Out of Carolina and didn't stop until I finished it just now.

Nothing like reading to make a body want to write.