With a Two-legged Goat and a Flying Fish

Who I’ve become after all my
adventures on land

is a seventy-one year-old man who
fasts from dawn to sundown

sailing off across the day
with a two-legged goat and a

flying fish searching for the
source of all this daylight

avoiding the usual ports of call
in favor of sleepy villages where

everyone knows everyone’s name and
night rolls its huge velvet

blanket over the rooftops of the
satisfied and satisfactory villagers

If I meet you once I’ll remember your
face forever

but your name might roll back into the
Babylonian directory of ghostly mortals

And if you see me in one place you’ll maybe
see me in another as

likely as a face appearing from
inside an iceberg

or a song audible in a
light spring rainfall

This is all coming right out of nowhere
and like all of us goes right

back where it came from
though at the end of the day when

plates are filled with rainbow
meats and Technicolor juices

and the tattooed sails are
mended for tomorrow and the

goat hobbles onto evening pastures
and the flying fish finally finds a

plot of water to plop in

you’ll see celebration in my eyes
of all these seventy-one years

come to fruition

and “God be praised!” on my lips
even if cracked by the many minor

hardships endured

8/19/11 19 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)

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