A Pirate's Pilgrimage (for Maraman Glossenger)
Once I vowed to leave a buried record in all the places whose exotic rites I had attended or arranged. It was wonder and desire and the impulse of science.
By devious means of odors and photons, the part of ourselves that stays locked in dreams, I would make a map of all such treasures: "Here, beneath the lowest branch of the southernmost magnolia tree in Jackson Square, two feet under…" Envisioning my old age and the final tour, a last word in sentimental journeys, I would dig these poems up and read for everyone my black and golden histories, those rhapsodies and exaltations that followed me through continents and vanished in the plenum with a sigh.
Always I would know the right place to dig, and the perfect instrument. And if ever I should have to stop it would be the stasis of a hovering angel whose wings are made of isinglass to cast the spectra of that world where life was turned to words and skeletons were buried with the gems.
Finished now with voyages of discovery, no more in command of my ship, a derelict, I have one eye, a peg leg, a jaded parrot on my shoulder; the spots where my treasures are buried are likely marked with busy monuments about five hundred feet tall.
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