Justin Evans

Geography Lesson

This morning the mountains were moving again.
                                          — Eleanor Rand Wilner

My seniors feel cheated after reading
how Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane.
They complain that Shakespeare
took the easy way out, found a door
that was left ajar and stole out the back.
I try to explain how many ways the earth
can surprise us. Take the mountains,
how the haze of morning can shift
the spreading landscape like a puzzle.
I tell them how rivers talk, how they sing
the earth's generations to anyone,
how the tops of the trees have been known
to leap away from their places and become birds.
Still, they want to rewrite the play. They want
to wrestle and stretch the words
into thin ink lines for a complicated map
of this world, turn their need for complexity
in this modern age upon itself, only look
for answers where we expect them least.

Consider Monet’s Lilies

At night I lie in bed and think of them,
wondering how I might adapt,
every day the same old thing,
every afternoon the same old man
painting my portrait.