Pilgrim

She invents wilderness
out of absence, erases houses,
the husband, the sewer pipe

and the suburb it empties.
Leaving the sparrow, the snake.
Daily walks in her Virginia suburb

minus the curb. Biographers
struggle to account for these years
in the wilderness, the housewife

off hiking. Maybe her Virginia should be
a West Virginia: wilder, less money,
the creek a holler

not this empty cul-de-sac.
Some days she erased all but the air,
maybe the light. Husband

of the space bar, carpool
a clean section break. She became
a man in the wilderness

and won the Pulitzer.
I told the truth, she said,
only I left some out.

What rises in such a clearing?
What stays home
checking and re-checking the egg.