I have never visited the High Plains.
Their vastness calls out for more love than I can muster.
In postcards dutiful wheat waves at no one in particular.
Clocks move so slowly you can hear grass dying from a passing car.
More often than once I have taken a route that was not mine.
It left me needy but not nearly enough.
Even if I had a chance at some other time to be somewhere else
I would not take it.
At home I give neighbors quarters to do laundry.
They loan me a can opener to make dinner.
I buy a modest welcome mat because it is the right thing to do.
And because I am not Amish but I am like the Amish.
©
's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sixth Finch, Bateau Press and Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics. She lives in New York City.
We’ve published two more poems by Seldin: “Nothing to explain in Crescent City” and “Don't go away right away.”
