Wright, Carolyne

English

Syracuse University Research Facility and Collaborative Environment

Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991) Volume 3 Issue 1 Syracuse Scholar Spring 1982 Article 19 1982 The Loveliest Country of Our Lives Carolyne Wright Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar  Part of the Poetry Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Carolyne (1982) "The Loveliest Country of Our Lives," Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991): Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 19. Available at: https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar/vol3/iss1/19 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991) by an authorized editor of SURFACE. For more information, please contact surface@syr.edu. The Loveliest Country of Our IJves The trains crawl from the stations slow as the locomotives in last century's tintypes. North Dakota stretches away, a long dream of wheat. We sleep as the cars hurtle forward between fields and the memory of fields .... At Glendive we awaken, stare into the moon-dry arroyos as if for the question our dreams kept trying all afternoon to ask, like passengers who gesture through plate glass to children smiling and shrugging from the platforms. The question had something to do with buttes rising and falling like waves of an inland sea, the warm Pliocene of our recollection: What was it we were going to become? The cottonwood leaves go on quaking, nodding agreement with every assertion of the wind. The question blends imperceptibly with its answer like a life continuing, an ocean of fields being slowly drained of wheat. We shift position, the moon fixed in mid-heaven, instructing travellers in the reliability of light. The train crosses the Missouri on its steel trestle; the water is rippling and wheat-colored, a dream of river with an answer for every memory of fields. We are passing through the loveliest country of our lives. POETRY-103 -Carolyne Wright 1Wright: The Loveliest Country of Our LivesPublished by SURFACE, 1982

The Loveliest Country of Our Lives

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The Loveliest Country of Our Lives

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