CORN MAZE
by David Barber
Here is where
You can get nowhere
Faster than ever
As you go under
Deeper and deeper
In the fertile smother
Of another acre
Like any other
You can’t peer over
And then another
And everywhere
You veer or hare
There you are
Farther and farther
Afield than before
But on you blunder
In the verdant meander
As if the answer
To looking for cover
Were to bewilder
Your inner minotaur
And near and far were
Neither here nor there
And where you are
Is where you were
SOURCE: Poetry (March 2013).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: David Barber is the poetry editor at The Atlantic. His first book The Spirit Level (Northwestern, 1995) was published as a winner of the Terrence Des Pres Prize. Barber’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Field, Georgia Review, The New England Review, The New Republic, Paris Review, Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His reviews and articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Criterion, Parnassus, and elsewhere. He lives near Boston. His most recent poetry collection is Wonder Cabinet (Northwestern University Press, 2006), available at Amazon.com.
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