Something no one will read.
Is Arthur buried though his effigy
stretches across whispering history?
Does Gilgamesh murmur all through the epochs,
though covered, under sand and the dry rocks
of Ur? Atlantis floats though sunk; and gulls
that follow sailors searching that great, dull
abyss in paintings waiting for new paint,
a life renewed and never quit as faint;
acrylic drops restore the missing gulls
and shine them, fly and drop and rise and lull.
True pens can only write in archetypes,
and scrub the grime away from the grave stones
of timeless heroes. Water streams out pipes,
the pen, revitalizing Gods and hones
the paper's edge, and riddles heroes' bones
with wormy holes until picked, and left lone.
The precious places behind the eye and mind,
the sacred places never left behind,
leave man to whimper at their absence, or,
to wish away their effervescence, or,
to contemplate the men and lands and times
that lie behind the mind behind the eyes.
Within the walls of imagined mortar,
repainted heroes, revitalized.