Each departure dragged with
difficulty,
chafed by slipping sands of life’s
small cares;
easy not to set out at all. Why go?
Why follow a star across a desert
boned with failure, bleeding with
sacrifice?
Why choose to honour life with
riches,
incense, the ointments of
mortality?
Was it worth the arid isolation,
the lonely wells in carrion
wilderness,
to be outlaws of anonymous time,
clutching at grim, determined
fortitude -
the journey long, the ending
measureless?
To stumble through grained
patterns of despair,
to shed old dreams but shelter
growing hope?
It drew from them dark-saddled
readiness,
moon-blind endurance, cold nights
of watch.
Still visioned men come, offer
gifts, wonder
at the simplicity of perceived
truth -
and go home another way.
Always,
yes, always they go home another
way
after that long birth.
(January,
1990)
