Unnecessary Immortality

How to navigate the straits
without crashing the rocks?
How to walk a line crippled,
how to cushion a hip destroyed?

You don’t read Wordsworth
after “The Child is father
of the Man,” a chicken & egg
riddle everyone unriddles.
You look for the albatross, see
a civilization undone
as the wedding guest invites
himself and doddles at the gate.
You inhale the burning fumes
others call opium.

The centuries go by, a blur.
Not all those with something to say
are dead. "Milton! thou shouldst be living
at this hour:" America "hath need of thee:"
Go pilgrim'ng where Here is not,
Bunyan'ng across one shoulder
what you have, all you ever need.

See the double rainbow? It’s here
Christ's blood-red mountains rise and part
between them a place to walk.
A desert never floods, it cataracts.
The Great River is paved over.
I climb La Bajada to play the slots.
Here I am . . . once upon a time.

20 August 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander