You travel a path on paper

You travel a path on paper
and discover you're in a city
you only thought about before.

It's a Sunday marketplace. Parakeets and finches
are placed on the stones
and poppies in transparent wrapping.

How can you be where you never were?
And how did you find the way—with your mind
your only measure?




"[You travel a path on paper]" by Fanny Howe from Selected Poems, published by the University of California Press. Copyright © 2000 by Fanny Howe. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.