As long as I have these saddlebags
I think I will be all right.
The sun in their weave, their wool stained
like a stained glass window,
their scorpion shapes and stylized camels
and cities with gates locked against marauders—
those clinched and vigilant symbols
doze like evolved watchdogs on my sofa.


One day I will lose this coin.
But as long as I have it,
I am walking the Street of the Fortunate
above the blue fabric, the silver scales of the sea—
through Cherries-that-Weigh-down-the-Bough Street
on foot down the Street of the Little Holy Wisdom


keeping in my pocket the coin that will
pay my way across the Golden Horn
in a long wooden craft, not new,
the boatman singing above the pulling oars.


The journeys I bring these saddlebags along on
are slow marches
over mountains freckled with snow,
over black waln ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase