Today’s poem is “Go with the Sun” by Jacqueline Moore. She was born in Greenwich Village in 1926 and has lived in London, Warsaw, and Boston, where she studied poetry with Seamus Heaney. She lived for many years off the grid in a cabin in Morrill, Maine. She now lives in Portland. Her most recent collection of poetry is Chasing the Grass (Littoral Books, 2019).
She writes, “Some deep-seated conviction or sudden visual impact triggers a poem - a few lines caught on the fly and expanded. 'Go with the Sun' is based on an old man who taught me how to find my in the deep woods by reading signs and come out in the sun.”
Go with the Sun
-Fred’s directions for getting there
by Jacqueline Moore
Bring no one.
Leave everything behind
and wear old boots.
Pasture’s grown up
to thistle and juniper
but you’ve got my wheel ruts
from the last time
I cleared the far field.
Follow those ruts
around the telephone pole
with no voice to it.
No wires.
Watch out
for the old well.
Cover’s rotted.
Get the sun
Just right,
and go with it
as far as the bedstead
uncoiling springs
among the blackberries.
Look for the blaze orange
I tied over a branch.
That’s your opening.
Go downhill
over stone and swamp
and the Devil’s own bugs.
Keep my wall to your right.
Take your good time
and save your feet.
Then climb the fire road
to the old cedar hole
where I was born.
You’ll bury me there
and plant my headstone
in the Pearly Everlasting.
“Go with the Sun” copyright 2019 by Jacqueline Moore. Reprinted from Chasing the Grass (Littoral Press 2020) by permission of the publisher and the author.