18_peregrination

PEREGRINATIONS

Behold! Human beings living in an underground den…seeing only their own shadows or the shadows of one another thrown on the wall of the cave.
Plato

I think of those who wake up sweating,
make their bed and simply go,

scrawling an unsigned note on the kitchen table
as they leave… Exiles, migrants,

peregrine souls…I imagine them with back-packs
at small unknown stations

waiting for the fast train heading south -
Pistoia… Firenze...Roma –

staring down the silver tracks to burnt-out groves,
where goldfinches sing

where history has run out. I see them at the harbour
of Piraeus slumbering in the open light,

a one-way ticket in their hand for the slow ferry
to a dozen Cycladic isles.

Even asleep they seem to know they will not return
to the red brick house,

to the old cul-de-sac; they dream of the perpetual ocean
cleansing the marble rock…

And this makes me think of those who either lacking spunk
or freedom stay at home

yet see in the peregrine flight an image of themselves:
another pilgrimage,

where each day they reject the flicker of electronic shadows
on the wall and climb

the arching stairway. And through a spiral turning of the mind
exalt the mean, provincial, hours.