The Peregrini (Dec. 6, 2004)

Clearly I am no more salted
by your disquieting gaze
than any other man
to stare too long offshore.
Look: the far islands are
fat reliquaries of desire,
each wave dislodging
a saintly skull or darker
pelvis bone from sands
you once walked on.
Between the fourth
and fifth centuries AD
the drifting coracles
were legion, each packed
with a man in exile,
his eyes weak upon
the vast blue main,
his heart that psalter
which you intone
with a voice from
every hurtful door.
That tide of saints
washed on every
lonely shore with
the same force that
would later raise
cathedrals, wave after
wave, with such
inconsolable stone.
Those coracle
to bone motions I
repeat here in
daily jaunts from I
to Thou -- peregrini
of ink on paper
which leave every
known and home behind
to sing the next psalm’s
distant shore, each
as wondrous as wine
for pouring blue seas.
Around and far behind
me stand the viscous
shades of such
devout desire, egregious
in their cock-hard
basalt, waist-high
in time’s lost sands.
Fathers of my fathers,
toll with me here
this lonely matin hour
which calls every boat
from shore to shore.
Join me in this song
for ageless sailing
through her futile,
fructive door.