Presence

                                                        North
packing                                          
        with Litteljahn and equipment
Pahn searches for wool socks                  
suspecting Litteljahn    of stealing them     
feeling guilty    for his suspicion       
                       finally Pahn finds a pair
and is ready for travel               

He goes south with a ride                                      
                a station wagon
to a town close to home             
where he finds a building full   
of voyagers         and brown
paneling        He is asked
how he will get home                                                      
             He says
it is close enough to walk         
                                               but goes looking
for a hitchhike         
Outside        the heavens        
gloom       along the freeway              and       
river       and drizzle bids him                                                     
to the residences
                                                                 The rain
comes autumn
the homes
turning yellow                     
 clapboard
                                                        silent
Pahn walks streets                                                     
                         Peering
into                                     
this recurring neighborhood 
He lost his camper here once                             
      It rolled
away while he was                                                           
                              sleeping in it     and he never found it again
River vacillates           being                       
Eel or Willamette
In the town's outskirts
             across the rimy field                   is Oregon
but when Pahn meets the freeway               
                                             again
                                                                       in another town
           the river is certainly Eel        and she lures him
                                                                     He can’t resist her
                     blue grayness               miles
of drenching                                                      
                        the filling of
                  his throat                     he enters
                                                                          her
                                                          She carries him
to the wilderness
                                  black nesting
hemlock                                                   
            wet meadows
                                                                                 green
determination      belied by bending
and vapors                and finally
 
                                     with countercurrents
                                                                      Pahn is
rushed through the riparian                                                    
woods                             

He clambers from the wet
blackness      joining a presence and
                       climbing the rock bluffs of a fusion land
Oregon/England 
                                                   He
has grown large     surveying
the diminished countryside      glancing
alternately at his maps     The presence
                                                                       points out
the towns     He names them
and shows Ahgreyeuss Pahn
Eel's mouth

They have come to the sea
and the presence has given Pahn a gift
a wonder
a glass float         The sun
caught shining
through test tubes on end            The presence
instructs Pahn to swim
with the refracting glass
but it hurries ahead of him
out to sea growing          and is lost           Unconcerned
the presence brings Pahn ashore   dry
to a public building

This building finishes the journey
The presence stays outside
becoming Paul McCartney playing
guitar
Pahn goes inside
It is a friendly building
a place of repose or study
The walls are brown        paneling
like the mobile home where
his grandfather lived in the last
years before he died        Pahn is
at once disappointed and
relieved at the sameness

Regardless              he knows
he has arrived