Pasta In A Ditch, by Brendan Cooney

Brendan Cooney is a U.S. poet living in Copenhagen. His poetry has appeared in Spillway, Sugar House Review, Canary, and Isthmus. He’s published essays in Prairie Schooner, Salon, Counterpunch, Chicago Reader, and Outlook India, and journalism in National Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, and other magazines and newspapers. Glimpses of films and other work are at: https://brendancooneyblog.wordpress.com/

Poet on the poem:

My immediate inspiration here was the Tang dynasty poets. The twin longings I have long had for solitude-in-nature and for home I was thrilled to find in work over a thousand years old. The pasta story ended with the man, a Swedish dairy-farmer, taking me for an Eastern European burglar, rounding up neighbors a few minutes later to hunt for me. I could see their lights from my new hiding place. The alienation from the species I felt at the time deepened. A homelessness never more shocking than upon return to my sacred swath of ground in Maryland.