West

West
© Surazeus
2018 01 20

I saw no spirits of the living dead
in the underworld of our memories
when I descended in the faded footsteps
of Orpheus, Odysseus, Vergilius,
and Dante in my quest to find my soul
as I wander westward ten thousand years.

Each timeless valley of the teeming world
along the way in the journey of hope,
my ancestors blazed, following the sun,
from Scythia to Scotland to Oregon,
they arrived, married locals, then sired children
who continued on west around the globe.

With every generation we move on,
leaving relatives behind who remain
still living there another thousand years,
while we explore further the wilderness
in search of that elusive paradise
that haunts our dreams in western twilight glow.

No matter where I live across the land
of America, sea to shining sea,
I do not feel at home, whether I stay
one year or fifteen years, in school, at work,
or traveling through as I play guitar,
singing tales of explorers who go west.

From England to Massachusetts by sea
Anne Bradstreet first sailed to America
to establish new home as my first mother,
three hundred thirty years before my birth,
and still I wander far across the land,
chasing rainbows east and west toward the sun.

I see the ghosts of my ancestors float
forever in the yards of homes in towns
where they lived and died long before I woke
conscious of their soft voices in the wind
that teach me how to sing dreams of the dead
which light my way west to paradise lost.