Every single night as the body dies,

poetry percolates the mind,

and I find myself,

taking one of those dark odysseys into the soul  

with questions that swim into the infinity  

on what is poetry, what does it behold:

Is it the rivers that lead the birds back to the nest?

           Is it the waters, eroding the stones,

           smoothing the pebbles that build a home?

           Is it the crackling cinders, floating from the flames  

           of a wildfire to die upon its first breath in the saltine air?

           Is it the evergreen grass and the bark of an old oak tree,

           thirsty for rain to wet the insatiable soil

           that grows branches that speak with possibility?  

           Is it the milk & honey that drips off the dewy lips  

          of the sun to feed its golden nectar into our moribund souls? –

          still starving for more.

          Is it the reason that I am seduced by the moon  

          that undresses me with its iridescent light,

         baptizing me with its glow?  

         Is the constellation of stars, separated by space

         but connected by longing,

         by arms reaching for arms?

Or,

        is it the journey,  

       the walk through the wavering mountains,

       the climb ants take up into the elephant hills,

       the ships drifting upon the cerulean seas,

       guided by the bursting horizon  

       and the winds of a calming breeze?