In to the night I wondered,
hopelessly looking for that
one hint of truth,
that spiritual essence
that would help me discover
who and what I really am.
Who am I?
What am I?
What should I do?
Who should I be with?
Where should I go
to fully understand my
destiny and purpose in life?
Then, as if succumbed by
glimmering wisdom
it occurred to me;
the journey itself
was the map of truth.
It beckoned the path,
that perfect azimuth
that would lead to the
unsolved mystery of
who and what I really am.
It was only then that I resolved
to relax and enjoy the journey.
It would be a trip through life’s
peaks and valley’s.
En-route I would witness the
construction of a life time of memories
as I patiently waited for my destiny to unfold.
The end of the journey was clouded in mystery
but I sensed its end would come much too soon.
Even if I ventured through more of life’s valleys’ then peaks
I would still be grateful for having had the opportunity
to take the trip, and I would ultimately cherish
the promised enlightenment that comes only,
in to the night, at journey’s end.
The gerbil eyed me
from the jar.
He was upside down
- or I was.
His tail was very long
and stuck out of the glass jar
a long way.
His nose was long.
Pink were his little hands and feet
and none of these could get a grasp on his
new glass confines.
His eyes were warm and brown,
his coat a sandy color like the desert
where he burrowed.
The glass jar was an improvisation.
He arrived upside down
dangling by the tail,
handed over by my Arab students.
A desert-rat
to commemorate Desert Storm.
His situation in the jar
was precarious and temporary
and since I had no better home,
and no idea what he ate,
I quietly released him
to the desert’s noonday heat.
Screaming, screaming and then stop
As half blurred hand meets alarm clock,
Another late night party flounders in my brain.
Already late, I slam the pock marked door behind me,
Could have mistaken it for a mirror!
Keys chitter and jingle
And the car is away.
The roads are a mock with pleased-to-meet-you pedestrians,
But I’m soon there;
At my childhood,
Ill-fitting memories now
Like the coat I so nobly burnt
I back up the car; cold stutter,
And reverse straight into the aluminium tide,
Chill chill chill and colder,
I press myself to the white water walls.
Tuesday,
Two oclock, maybe later, my watch wasn’t waterproof,
So they said at the inquest.
JJ Royster took up pheasant hunting
after inheriting Biff Swaank’s bow and arrow
when the fatality occurred leaving Biff nearly
unrecognizable on the railroad tracks east of the Mississippi.