Writing Wrecks All Conservation

In the poem of the open air,
The recluse considers retreat
As a choice and a privilege,
As a choice or a privilege.

Privation’s cousin, privilege,
Saunters in tight pants and a white
Hoodie across the parking lot
Adjacent to the poem’s recluse.

If you can get away, if you
Can get your mortal body far
Enough away from the other,
More talkative mortal bodies,

Should you be pleased with yourself, should
You inform anyone of it,
Your privation and privilege?
Voices float up from the tourists.

Is it possible to visit
Someone else’s home and not be
Worth deriding as privileged?
Thoreau and Tao Yuanming draw crowds

Now as incantatory names.
Would it have been better if they
Had never settled far away
From more desirous neighborhoods,

Had never written so damned much
About where they had gotten to?
Cold Mountain should have left the stones
Alone and not carved poems on them

Boasting of how no one could be
Free of work and effort like him.
Somehow, if where you are seems good,
If only for being empty

Or at least not overflowing
With people entangled in nets
Of their own dust, you feel compelled
To brag about about your privilege.

Maybe don’t. Maybe just be poor
And marginal without writing
About it, without extolling
Your privation. Keep it that way.