I stop for the view on the horizon,
it’s true, or partly true
every place is a vista
I keep going to.
It’s true, or partly true
I can’t tell how far I’ve gone
and I keep going, too
no one’s on this path.
I can’t tell how far I’ve gone
through these cedars, maples,
no one’s on this path,
no openings, no cut throughs
through these cedars, maples.
Sometimes the only way is the only way.
No openings, no cuts throughs
I can never go back the way I came—
sometimes the only way is the only way,
I stop for the view—the horizon
I can never go back to. The way I came
every place is a vista.
Click here to read Alexis Ivy on the origin of the poem.
Image: by Thomas Münter, licensed under CC 2.0.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry and the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. Her poems have recently appeared in Saranac Review, Poet Lore and Sugar House Review. She is an advocate for the homeless in her Cambridge and lives in her hometown, Boston.
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