If in digging
through grim archives
I unearth those callous
epithets of my youth
Find on a resin smeared page
the smoke of anger
and the greed
for a touch yielding
to my thick dumb hands

Read the hormones
like a book of days
a book of sorrows
a book of shadows

In a salubrious haze
I will come to know myself
my ways and wend the
crooked maps of the ill-spent
where X marks the spot
turn left at the willow
right at the stump
and realize
I survived myself
if only for a time.