As at the Far Edge of Circling

By Ed Roberson Ed Roberson

As at the far edge of circling the country,

facing suddenly the other ocean,

the boundless edge of what I had wanted

to know, I stepped

into my answers’ shadow ocean,

the tightening curl of the corners

of outdated old paperbacks, breakers,

a crumble surf of tiny dry triangles around

my ankles sinking in my stand

taken that the horizon written

by the spin of my compass is that this is

is not enough a point to turn around on,

is like a skin that falls short of edge

as a rug, that covers a no longer

natural spot, no longer existent

to live on from, the map of my person

come to the end of, but not done.

That country crossed was what I could imagine,

and that little spit of answer is the shadow—

not the ocean which casts it— that I step next

into to be cleansed of question.

But not of seeking …it as

if simplified for the seeking,

come to its end at this body.

Source: To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan University Press, 2010)

Biography

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Roberson studied painting in his youth and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh. His extensive travels inform his work,which is also influenced by spirituals and the blues, and by visual art, such as the mixed-media collages of Romare Bearden. Poet and critic Michael Palmer has called Roberson “one of the most deeply innovative and critically acute voices of our time.”

Roberson is the . . .

Continue reading this biography