Lines Composed a Few Miles Out of my Head while Fleeing an Unpacked Garage During Fall Cleaning

Athens, Georgia

January 26. 2014

                                           " … that blessed mood,      

In which the burthen of the mystery,      

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world    
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood …"

Worse than wandering through Walmart

in search of the elusive item

the one true token

amidst a thousand false idols

assaulting my psyche

in aisle forty-two.

Harder than hosting a preteen soiree

in a darkened rollerdrome

where disco strobes sweep dingy floors

and racks of speakers blast strange tunes

to squeals of young she-sirens

circling their dreams.

You’ve been there too, I trust –

the tightrope frays

and you’re hanging by a torn nerve;

the coherence engine quits

and you’re stranded on the shoulder

with a thousand yard stare;

Your garage devolves

to Augean stables

and you, sir, no Hercules

as you stand, slump-shouldered

sweat strewn to entropy

amid the ruins of one less day.

I have wandered confused in the Khan el-Khalili

washed in the call of merchant and muezzin  

lost in the heart of the Grand Bazaar

through interior alleys of Istanbul

down halls of rug and spice

by all the bling you’ll never need.

And I’ve raced through the bowels of MIT

searching for a shifted course,

clock winding down on the final exam.

I do not remember the subject now

but learned her remorseless lesson –

a hard clock marks our mortal time.

So I seek the peace of pilgrimage

in a slow country drive

straight through the senescence of winter

over amber Georgia hills

across the muddy Oconee

to the company of poets

Where the blessed mood comes,

grace to the unworthy

which cannot be corralled

nor bartered, nor brokered, 

but sufficient for a day redeemed

as manna to the wandering mind.

(quotation from William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.")

"Howard Finster's Bike Shop,"
photograph by David Noah, Winterville, Georgia