homing
I have sent a carrier pigeon to myself
by way of Skagway, Alaska so
that the duration before receipt is of such
significant length that by the time it arrives
landing silent in this desert I will have
forgotten it it
will be addressed to me by my first name only
and on a yellowing page that crinkles that way
I may speak to myself with some clarity address
those aspects which are only reachable
from a great distance I will sit on the back
stoop the coming monsoon dark on the horizon
knees tightly together and the bird will flit
to the high tip of my stone wall stepping along
with stilt-
ed red feet picking at morsels interspersed among
the
crisp brown leaves
Keith, though not "silent in the desert" as he claims, does write from the perspective of a desert dweller in Arizona, with all of the stark isolation that landscape sometimes imposes. Notice how he ignores the normal line breaks at the end of a sentence or thought, and even needlessly divides "stilted" at the end of a line. This structure heightens the alienated, hermetic identity of the poem's persona and the difficulty of its self-understanding. The detour through Skagway is also significant; derived from "shԍagéi," the Tlingit word for "beautiful woman," it is a nickname for Kanagu, who transformed herself into stone at Skagway bay and causes the strong, channeled winds which blow there. The nearby Face Mountain is known in Tlingit as Kanagu’s Image. Thus, in the course of a way to overcome the difficult process of self-communication, Keith's "bird will flit / to the high tip of my stone wall ,,, / picking at morsels interspersed among the / crisp brown leaves."
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