"Pilgrims" by Rodney Nelson

PILGRIMS

for Warren Williams

if we had not gone and ridden the way from

Tamaulipas to Tamalpaís we

might never have known earth in February

staying in our native winter country

would have made what so much better for whom as

we knew when we went and took that right turn south

but we were the ones de Crèvecoeur had written

about and we meant to leave even though it

put hurt on the many and more not dreaming

it was our term in variegated

February and the quick scent of bay and

oleander and paloverde and warm

salt sand that let us come back in undue or

due time where men do not abide without a

mind to the tick of living earth under snow

we ride the way from Tolna to Tioga

who once went popping a quirk in Sonoma

and know what the pilgrim worms are at down there

Rodney Nelson's work got into mainstream journals long ago; but he turned to fiction and did not write a poem for twenty-two years, restarting in the 2000s. So he is both older and "new." See his page in the Poets & Writers directory:
http://www.pw.org/content/rodney_nelson
He has worked as a copy editor and lives in the northern Great Plains.