My Journey
Three days of hiking with only bottled water
is penance enough for one lifetime,
the path littered with opera and breath-beats,
the sarcasm of the bullfrog, the yelp of the red fox.
Every night enough stars shoot across the sky
to grant every wish for a hundred years of wishing,
every aspiration, every melody, every quarter note.
Sweat streams puddle down the corridor of my back,
my ears open into mouths, my tongue catches sound on its tip.
Near the end of the trail, resting, every goodness within me,
within my back, my hands, my blistered feet, my muscles,
everything thyme, sage, peach water, an essence of Aradia.
In the end I did not enter the shiny box of darkness.
I dyed my hair instead, removed my teeth,
fell back in love.
That was what was written on the exit sign
at the beginning of the trail
leading back home.
| Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, what a sterling capitulation of the journey! I overuse the word “transcendent,” but it applies so perfectly to this poem, this book of poems. Transcendent. Thank you for gracing the screens of Moristotle & Co.
ReplyDeleteThat is what my life is like every day on my farm - day long trail walks tending to chores while bullfrogs, fox, and birds sing in the background, water runs through the stream, and sweat streams puddle down my back. Every single day - and I always end up back home at the end of the day. When the nights are clear, a million stars appear, and wishful thinking got me here.
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