Journey
by Benjamin Kirby
Part I
Promise begins, a clover-covered field.
Slash pine and sycamore at the narrow edge,
old southern live oak, turned to make way.
Road dust settled among the pebbles.
Handful rocks,
stars collide.
Eastern wind
at our backs
Walk to the crossroads from the wide open place,
the curb cut and turned to any direction.
Bull thistle and buttonweed reach high,
away from you, away from your path.
Headed west,
heading out.
Footprints fade
in sunlight
Wandering spirits at the wide four corners,
light of the western setting sun on the palms.
Come, my child, come with us down the road,
towards all you have yet to fully know.
Small pebbles,
golden dust.
Peace outside,
hearts afire
Deep gouge in the black mud from a truck's back tire.
Gray Spanish moss sifts the low sun all the same,
radiance crowns your head in halos
Who would not follow you on our path?
Early start,
late to home.
Joy's new smile,
holding hands
Your births to this world were accidents of grace,
bound to me through providence, divinity,
love's wholly unbound benediction
love's wholly unbound loving purpose.
Yellow afternoon sun blazes through the grass,\
then fades away with a liquid precision.
Old worries mount in my heaving breast,
the day fades only as it begins
Oh, fire!
The meaning-embers catch the day of your birth
Oh, fire!
You nestle against skin, the sparking cradle
****
Part II
Quick-fleet days get away from me
bind me up in wicked chaos
roil me in half-lucid dreams
and time becomes an iron hammer
As if all my problems might be nails
Gray stone burrows down to the depths, the depths
yet I dig, hack away like a madman, searching
looking for that old memory where we smiled
trying to find the golden idol of you
And lo, it might not even be where the map says
The black water creek runs like a spine
down the middle, jagging left, muddling right
There is a hidden space, a gray stone tunnel
hidden like a goblin home at the headwater
In it I look for glimmering hope, for, finally, a home
Without fear, you show me the stone hole
amid the overgrown grass, trees, sprouting mangroves
mud and dirt backed up around it from the flood
it is foreign to me now, strange, unknown
I recoil, but want nothing more than to touch it
****
Part III
Today I missed it
Missed the chance, the opportunity
To stand and catch the sunlight
To breath in the life of the world
The butterfly flew past
Carried on a hopeful wind
Carried on a thermal rise
Dissolving into the colorful places
A songbird called out
Singing, singing of the oasis in the trees
Of a soaring life on wing
Children laughing in a field cry back
The brave rabbit ventured out
Sure of the field
Looking beyond my shadow
Chittering to its vulnerable young
Benjamin J. Kirby writer in St. Petersburg, Florida. His poetry is in the 2024 Florida Bards Poetry Anthology, the Ulu Review, and more. Personal and political essays are in the Sun Shine Republic (Substack). For eight years, he produced the award-winning political blog The Spencerian. Read more at BenjaminJKirby.com.