The Way West
Flying out of the east in splendor the silver beauty of the wings, oh beauty poised and driving like twin knives, and all those migratory lives depending, as it happened, on the magic of rivets and steel webs and pilots immune to fear – so be it, he travelled west, before the sun could dog and trouble him, falling headlong into a desert ground, seeded with aloes and yucca and dryland sage: if the least of these seeded also a desire to dive, to dig and bury his winged feet, to cover his travel with a delicate frost and keep his eyes from leaning further west: to say I will decide contentment as one decides the right soap for the wash, or chooses the ingredient for a meal – so be it, may the peaks there overtower him, reminder of his measure and short life, let the wind lift every morning with common scents, and expected small delights, his name be humbled and diminished for lack of yearning: Ah, yes, a clever man, but where his passion went–? Continued on, unmindful of the desert, the terrible, bleak terrain of it, and perished in a gully, dried to a fine chili-dust that mixed with the sand and disappeared for all its fire and redness. That may be a kindness: to cull from his ambitions a circle smaller than his shadow, an innocent hedge-row with a few slow flowers; not to ache so for so many colors; that is why he travelled west, dismissing Eden, perfect in its past, to praise and kiss his partners for their human dress and dreams; to balance the rolling rock with the slanted path, the day’s graces with the night’s small death; oh, let the rest depend on silver wings and say enough, as final as it seems.
Minneapolis, Dec, 1986
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