Under the Tumult was Peace

"For the groaning sound of its straining timbers, and the engine throbbing like an overtasked human heart, had made the ship seem a living thing to me; and it was tired of the struggle, and under the tumult was peace." – WH Hudson, from Idle Days of Patagonia










Above, by mind, the dream
of that steamer led by Hudson,
what I'll never know of El Negro
is that the earth passed
and passed around the image
of the Patagonian Aracauna
as the Conquistadors might
but as mist and vapor and the speculate
of something never achieved.
I too see the purple sparrow
flit around the odorous thorn bush,
what, perhaps, Darwin saw
by the long port of the Beagle,
a chiseled land flawed only
by its counter mirrors of the flesh
of the native indian born to defend.
For me, today, it will rain
along the eyelash of the bay
here at the frozen fields
of the midwest by November.
It would not matter whether
I had taken the helm of a Viking
ship here at the Mississippi mouth;
to fly along the braided edge
of the bluff lines familiar
by old farm trails matter less.
Set upon the tortured beautiful
land of the Andes only I grow.
A heart by mind and see straight again.