A poem I wrote

Seeing that I'm not going to be published anytime soon...

This is a poem I wrote awhile ago:


Columbus, circa 1990s

A monument in the grass, knee-high as
a gnome, still as a shadow as the sun
gains a quarter-inch and as foreign as
the conquistador who sweats it out in
his shiny armour, impenetrable
as the terrible chain-mail found only
on the armadillo. This is alien territory,
marked only by flown huts and ash-white bones
of things with wings. He has come to claim it;
the explorer is a brave one and there
is nothing to fear, really. He only
cried when he was angry or frightened, and
now, presently, this land is all his for
the taking. The sun shines brightly and the
field grown with such mighty blades of steel is
drawn with the cold blackness of fainting sight;
this is the past of the earth, memory,
flown. He knows nothing of those who landed
before himself, the parched noise beneath
his feet; they say nothing, are nothing: the
language of ghosts is not a conscious one,
purely crafted of Nature's compulsion.
To him, it is the one place yet untouched
by God and the knowledge of God. Amen.