Being that we are the potentiality
of dimensions to come
let us set out to sea
compass-less. Waves and dunes,
latitudes and longitudes.
All of our efforts before
have amounted to the platitudes
of perfecting preservatives.
Even a dead man’s garden
will continue to grow, but
what may grow there is ever
wilder than any human hand
could plant. Fingernails
and manes,
runes and omens.
If there is an All-Knowing Eye,
it shall remain shut until
there is something altogether new
to be dissected.
We were not made
in God’s image;
we were made to wield
his eyesight.
The heart is not an autoclave.
When crossing a river,
we muddy the water.
And here all water is sacred water.
As every celestial body
in the Universe, inscribed into
the Micro and Macro Book of Verses,
corresponds to my own
flesh-encompassed dust,
I walk under stars as proud as a drawn sword.
I am filled by this life
as a well in a rainstorm overflowing
long after the tribe of its diggers
has migrated, been decimated.
The only way to cross the desert
is on foot. And so Hermes on his wings
wore boots.
The mail gets here in time, in time to
requisition a fertile iris,
the last mandala for all of us.
Mandalas for all of us, athapoovidals
petals and eyelashes
dunes and ocean-floors.
Insignias in powder.
Vortices in typhoons.
I was never apprenticed to mending wings, but,
in this wilderness, one must make passage
for all amends.
Joe Milford is the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show and the co-editor of Scythe Literary Journal. His first book was published by BlazeVox press in 2010 entitled Cracked Altimeter. He is a full-time professor of English and Creative Writing in Georgia
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