To proceed over memory
drawn down the breadth of its myth.
To withdraw sand from the glass
pressed against a cracked view
of an overgrown road
soon turning into a driveway of crushed shells.
The oppressive Paleozoic heat
that reeks of swamp and burns your feet
in dunes of moccasin decay.
Feel the pulse underneath this artery
as you pass the veil
on the way to the sea.
Through a portal of scrub oak
in the cumberland undergrowth,
< you’ll spy blue herons in the lagoon.
Set sail in a one man vessel,
attach meaning to cloud craft
drifting across the moon,
precipitate night words
to breach the empty beach
in the hour when all else dims
but voices by the thousand
of unseen hosts rising from within
a cacophony of hymns.
It is a sound like searching,
following whims,
encompassing all that a highway would bring
to a child kept awake by heat lightning,
transfixed on the far reaches of the gulf,
that which is spread between the mist and the veil,
the imagination and the material.
Raw and unkempt,
the blanket was a thick fabric
with the whole night sky rolled up inside.
From out of the novelty of this lens
comes the nightly emergence of pens
to populate pages of explanation.
One legend speaks of a dragon
that brought the written word to the Americas
and we’ve followed ever since
the marks that singed
the trunks of old growth forests.
We’ve listened to tales
that spoke of brilliant trails
as its fireball sails
from out of a mysterious wellspring of suggestion,
to illuminate the skies of our introspection
and to unveil the disguise
over this ancient connection
coiled throughout the years,
through w(rites) of passage and fears
that these pale reflections
lifted from its scales
are somewhat inadequate to reveal
the full length of its depth and perfection.
yakskinpocketnotes 