Pilgrim

The memory of you leaves me now

more than it rears its skull.

But I travel backward and gather it up,

like a beggar.

I go back to the tip of the Wing Dam

and look around for the dust of it--

on my back now. On my hands and knees,

wildly.

I drink your beer sacramentally,

each night with the same stale holiness.

I am sisyphus and I am the rock and the snake--

I am a rodent, its wheel.

I am all of these to myself and alone.

You, somewhere, as you ever were,

even here.

I wear a neck brace to my night seminar

for I’d made you my arbiter of consciousness—

liked to let you usher me in and out of it.

The last thing I saw

and the first on return.

I conjure the image of your freckled arms

swatting at bees in the air

of my rented cabin.

I recall the one I trapped under the soap dispenser

who lived for so long in his tiny pocket of air.

Who lived for so long

I could barely bring myself to leave him.

I let you drive my civic around

those blind and winding turns of Wayne,

trusting you’d know when to go,

foolish and sure I went with you.

I recall the violent crash of a tree

just opposite our fence the night before—

mere feet from where you sent me to the moon

on a tire swing.

How carefully you funnelled me down.

You told me you would see me soon

in the voice of a swelling gourd--

and so I knew that first day of October

I would haunt myself on your behalf.

I hope now or then you do the same for me.

You planted your budding secrets and absconded--

abandoned them with me so, what?

They might not be orphaned?

I could not make sense of how I was to hold them

in such empty arms.

But, still, I reposition them, searching for comfort--

I cradle them and rock

until we are all strangled asleep.

It is me who is an orphan now.