On a simple pleasure journey by train
between Cumberland and Oakland, convinced
by an aging duellist of the charms
of the Land of Canaan — the true perfection
of God’s creative bounty — with an artist
and two mules, you entered the wilderness.
Days of miry swamps, thickets of thorns,
heaps of rocks, and sheer precipices
at every turn, then the hidden falls.
You entered the utter solitude of place.
So a door swung open, and you walked through
into a silent realm filled with emptiness.
Oh, to risk your life, again and again.
To be totally whole, and alive.
