The New World

.…He drives the vehicle of azure
from the University of Hypothetical Life
down the grey lines                                              
sage pavement                                               
brush coastal                                                         
to the becalmed dunes        
     and their barrows
          with archeologists

Mediterranean ruins    reconstruct
in sand pockets                        
desert stone                
mason’s mortar
               heat
rubble

The workmen sort straws
chains
armor
to the view and interest of history
                                        while shoveling eternity
onto the transient dunes
 
                                                       Pahn is shouldered away
         his interest diffused by
the academic models…

…Sand seeps onto the roads                                  
and cypress sprouts     obscure the distance
A missing wind thrills the coast again                     
and the turquoise vehicle                             
burrowing through the trails     
seeks an end to itself
by the estuarine river      

Pahn walks lower                                                                    
The dune’s roots                                                                
entangle    language and culture                                 
As he travels through the sand                                     
wind gathers perception in the air

passages open
                                         for his pick-up reincarnated
as a shaman    in the afterworld

The man of beads                                              
leads south to river-mouth
       of sedge and pickle-weed
silt and water
wading                                         
breathing resolution

They are joined by Ahnjehlia                                                   
and cross many islands…

…finding themselves in a boat                           
          rowing toward high       chambered cliffs
carven with European houses

They are going to a burial                                      
presided over by a Swiss couple
in a high    sandstone balcony
                  who are waiting with a canoe casket
covered in blankets

They push it off solemnly
        from under its covers
revealing
a human sized     
American  
          chocolate bar

plunging                                                 
and disappearing
                         into the river