This is a thought of a man who dreams to escape from his everyday life and human society, and to grant his dream.

“I walk as far as I can, / then farther, past / the chain-link barring the road, / tire tracks deep as the rut in my thinking, / the place I always get stuck.”

There are obstacles everywhere and anytime, and we always get stuck. The farther we walk, the longer we walk, and the more obstacle there will be. It is obvious that we will get stuck more as we walk farther, but still we walk as far as we can. Why?

“Wanting more, or wanting / less, to be rid of the word / called wanting.”

Because we want to escape and be free from desire and greed in our everyday life. So we walk as far as we can, dreaming somewhere else.

“Boulders, tall grass, shrubs I can’t name, / birds I can’t name, the ocean.”

We are sure that we will encounter more many obstacles and things we do not know as far as we walk. But, at the same time, it means that we will see more many things we have never seen, we will experience we have never had before. Boulders, tall grass, shrubs, birds – we cannot name, we don’t know the names, we don’t care the accurate names.

“Being a stranger sneaks me through the latch / of language – briefly.”

It is not only just because we don’t understand the domestic language and in “the latch of language” – we would have difficulties in the pronunciations, spellings, or understanding the meanings. But also because we just enjoy the moment and the view we are looking, the things themselves we are surrounded. Name has no meaning anymore among them. Language, name, they are just created by and for human beings, which has no meaning when we are out of our human society.

“Back of the sea like one line of thought, / slight variation of foam at the shore / where artifice gives itself up.”

We don’t have to be suffered by complex things here, think things just simply like the one-lined sea view in front of us. It is calm, slow and silent, as if we are separated from our busy everyday life.

The man in this poetry turns for home, and the poetry ends with this line:

“If a gap exists at all, it’s there / I might have slipped through.”

“The chain-link barring the road”, “tire tracks” – the obstacles we have encountered can be said as ‘gaps between the reality and our dream’. The road is the way to the destination where we dream. “The chain-link barring the road” and “tire tracks” are the obstacles which we should have overcame to go on. Considering those factors, the obstacles can be a metaphor of “a gap” between the reality (the position we are right now) and our dream (the place we want to go).