The Pilgrimage: Part 24 / Phillip Neal Tippin
A night winds between today and tomorrow
To be swum or carried over—
The current ever fed by evenfall,
Whose shore comes nigh at dawn.
I know pride as a person,
Unmediated by metaphor.
I know humility as Human,
By condescension came near.
Disease diagnosing diseases.
A theoretical pump
Or the living stream.
There is a life lived at the margins
A rabbit life all timid and tremulous.
Like the old brambling rose
I’m left with only pricks
And no flower to show.
Poem On Sea,
A place we can come,
Bywater where
Clean sea breezes blow.
At the lowest dregs of the kettle
Dredging the liméd edge, after
Years of boiling, heat and steam
Precipitate the steeping tea’s
Constant comment with a mineral hint.
Moments must be rounded by work
To gain glimpses of the subtle turning.
Mysterious mushrooms
Morels, a mouldering horde
Broke through the lines
Of the quarantine’s hold.
I washed my face in the morning sun
Rubbed my skin to a lather in its light,
As, pouring over the hill,
Across the window sill,
It rinsed away all trace of night.
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