Going Gypsy by Laura Lovic-Lindsay

She left her husband and the house: going gypsy,

a nomadic soul she comes to tell me she's caravaning

pow wows, stringing a blood connection that should

have happened before, merchanting her jewelry,

weavings. I imagine her fire-dancing with her glasses

lost in the caravan to be found or not in the morning,

she--in draped deer skins or earth-hued blankets.

She never mentioned him. I didn't know she was

married. She takes my email, promises to blog her days,

her travels, her epiphanies--New Mexico, the lure of

West, so many places to belong, so much new dust

to hold, a birthright that passed her, her retirement drained

to buy the caravan that takes her. Four rainbows woven

into the blankets over her and the chanting man from last

night's fire-dancing, she clips a strand of his hair

to weave into her next blanket. The ever-caregiver has

pushed off her caravan, moved to give the next care,

a string of fires like baubles on the necklaces you sell

wary tourists. She makes no mention of what her children

are lying to their friends. Their mother has gone gypsy--

send them photos of that same woman being absorbed

into the sun. That sun spits her back to the flames, stamps her

down like a foot around a fire-circle. We all seek our tribe

and pursue an explosion of sunsets eventually.

Laura Lovic-Lindsay left Penn State University with a literature degree in hand and no plan for the future. Ten years later, she began secretly herding words. Laura Lovic-Lindsay lives in a leaky old farmhouse in Western Pennsylvania, along a river that tells lies.