Pilgrimage

a journey was made past
whispering grasses along
a discarded road to receive
the river's anointing touch

humbly through silver
seas of spicy wormwood
to the shore where my
perceptions would erode away

at the sandy river bank
below lacy tamarack boughs,
blanketed by leaves bronzed
by the turning of seasons

aroma of soaked clay and
evolution rose, the ancients'
incense amidst towering
pale trunks and verdigris canopy

currents of silt laden
unseen depths passed
before my adolescent knees
bent in naïve reverence

yearning within churned
as an earnest symbol, desire
to taste liquid memories
of epochs and golden idols

cast into the sweeping flow,
I watched fires float, daemons
drown and surety sink as they
drifted onward into the east

misread words of an unspoken
prayer drifted in the wind
and rested in the ears of deities
rollicking in the upper branches

my knees rose to numb stance,
a cicada emerging from its former
shell, and left below the lacy
tamarack my own former hell

from the sandy river bank
I flowed into the ocean of wonders
far beyond whispering grasses
and silver seas of spicy wormwood