Honesty Abated

April 25^th, 2011

By the back that turns

Once solid as granite

Weathered kaolinite it yearns

For life on the river

To set no foot again

On that shore of exception

And certainty yielding,

The mouth wide open

The heart pumping words

That will never hold so firmly

Or lead, as a trail, so clearly

As the moment I told you.

Blazes hidden in branches

Or by lightning erased

With the char of our deck time

Made morning oatmeal,

Every day, to subsist

For the bird that would fly

And land on the sail

A signal for shore

To approach and unhand

The knots on the rigs

That keep to the course,

Dump bilge, drop the sails,

To land we embark.

Running the eyes

The feet sight on land

To the fields, food to make

Do our stomachs demand.

And after we've eaten,

Tongues sated, salt licked

To the forests, to the trees

To the trails, the wind commands.

Traversed under shoe,

Weighted, kicked down,

The rocks cry out truth

And there we are found.

But as pressures release

And prints do progress

The canopy of life

Turns to cotton and wood--

On the water we are now,

To your posts, reassume.

New storms are coming,

The sails need the mend,

On our course we are sailing

For the winds do we bend.

To have followed the blazes

And been given their word

We have only a memory

Of the flight of that bird,

And the deep sigh and distant glance that it gives.