In early June of 2022, after we discussed the possibility of collaborating, the photographer Chuck Zovko sent me 39 digital copies of his remarkable images. I spent a good deal of time looking at his images, admiring their beauty and evocative power. The images I kept returning to seemed to press toward experiences of extreme vulnerability. Those images inspired the poem I wrote and are integral to the work. Chuck Zovko’s photographs, at each juncture where they appear, extend the poem, stretching the text in ways that, I believe, exceed language. — Lee Upton
Come Back
This time the world opens for one of us who saw
from the cliff of her life
cloud after cloud scaled with light
For there is always a child, one child playing hide and seek
until no one can find her and she is wandering
in woods, not knowing she is lost
not knowing what lostness means
This child: I can’t allow her to wander alone
even through this poem
We’re with her here, at least
while she looks up
into the trees’ open windows of emptiness
How dizzy she must be
as the clouds make high houses,
the coldness inside them tearing
as all along the path the leaves turn gray,
spirits fashioned inside branches,
each face caught by history and memory
until any child must see a monster choking
Now let her, drenched, her hair in burrs,
wander from woods into a field,
the wind dying down until we hear her calling
Let her stop long enough to be found safe
That’s when we’ll thank each leaf and cloud
each created and creating thing
and we’ll thank daylight, daylight lasting
and daylight coming again tomorrow, coming back for us
for our joy, even though we know the truth of things:
How wide is the world, how dangerous
How once found, we lose one another again
How a monster lurks at the edges of things
How soon every word we speak rhymes with grief
For how could we lose our children after we find them?
How often we feed our children to wars
and when they come back, eyes shining, they ask,
for generations: Why didn’t you come for me?
