Where I go is of considerable doubt.
Winter, Tallinn, I climb aboard the wrong trolley.
Always a singular beam of light leads me astray...

After thousands of cities I am safe when I say, “It is always the wrong trolley”—
Didn’t I love you with my whole heart? Athens? Dublin?

Solo gravitational effects: my body is light as a child’s beside the botanical garden’s 
        iron fence—
But turning a corner one feels very old in the shadow of the mariner’s church.

I ask strangers to tell me where I am.
Their voices are lovely, young and old.

Yes I loved you with my whole heart.
I never had a map...

Coordinated, Platonic movement in deep snow...
Crooked doors & radios in the bread shops...

—From Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011); republished here by author’s permission and by arrangement with The Permissions Company, as quoted below:

—Stephen Kuusisto, “Borges: They Are Knocking the Wind out of Me in Iowa City” and “Letter to Borges from Estonia” from Letters to Borges. Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Kuusisto. “Only Bread, Only Light” from Only Bread, Only Light. Copyright © 2010 by Stephen Kuusisto. All used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press: www.coppercanyonpress.org

Bio: Stephen Kuusisto