Into the Wild
By Dom Giovanni
“To everyone who makes journey”
Walking into the wild,
Leaning on the shoulders of the sun,
Your footsteps tracing mine,
Mine, tracing the steps of those who walked before,
The sound of our feet gone now,
Blown away by the winds of anonymity.
My motel was beside a marble headstone
On a hill in a secluded cemetery,
Where light filtered through an oak-branched roof.
No car, no companion, no money, and no food
But a small carton of milk and child’s box of cereal,
Purchased with my last change on the road an hour before.
I slept there, snuggling into the dry grass of summer,
Thinking of weary men, like myself, who lay beneath blossoming flags,
Giving no more thought to their loves, their times, their wars;
And, in spite of our intellectual development, all of us
Are involved in wars and revolutions, victories and defeats,
Even if only in the private psychosis’s of our minds.
Some men, too, must have lain beside me, who with callous tongues,
Cursed the darkness, as deceivers do, when the light fails.
Others, thankful for the peaceful slumber that had overtaken them,
Dreamt no more of apple-picking time and the great harvest.
Still others, forgetting happier times and the flowers of desire,
Died forgetful of even their own names and their ancestors,
Leaving a stranger to carve their name upon a stone.
As the alien stars peered down upon my exhausted frame,
Lying as if in state, within that sanctuary of decay,
I locked myself within the warm embrace of sleep.
My story did not end with failure and suffering on the fringe
Of the rough American wilderness,
Or with loathing that sent me away from those with whom I differed,
For such hauteur of the spirit I detested and I still do.
That black night of the soul ended with a burst of pure fire,
Forcing my eyes open. “Good morning, dead boys,” I called
To the mounds of the deceased, and being in no hurry to move,
I turned and slept surrounded by death an hour more.
Epilogue:
Wine berries grew fat and lazy on a thorny bush,
Along a high field nearby, overlooking a distant town.
Soon their plump red moons were floating in my cup,
And as the dew melted from the grass,
I ate a sweet breakfast fit for a vagabond king,
With only one thousand more miles to go,
No car, no companion, no money, and no food.
——
Dom Giovanni is an Irish Italian poet who has travel extensively throughout the world. He presently resides in Southeastern, Pennsylvania, where he writes and kayaks the Upper Chesapeake Bay region.
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