The Voyage

I am

       meat

           for my journey.

This canoe made of birch and ancestors’ bones,

laden with fleece, apples and rye bread, stuffed cabbage

and coffee, a map of charred margins, a rusted nail

ripped from Jozo’s Bosnian home, a ring of blue

lapis my other grandfather, and a photo of lovers—

they’re smiling-- on a great canyon’s edge.

Voices shine friendly through rain-fall and fog across familial waters;

these here in stillness those already gone, while grenades of stars

volcano our love through somnolent skies.

We’ll glide in silence over depths painted with eloping and cancer,

maples and moonshine, soup pots and opera, berry pie ala’mode.

Through silver waters black mud this voyage continues its flowing,

             woven and nourished by dark bread and story

          of Jozo and Ana, Ruth, Langley Raymond and Norma

                    to whom I am now bowing,

                   You are meat for my journey.