Journey's Fool
Ann Power
Beyond the sphere of widest gyre
passes the sigh that goes forth from my heart…
— Vita Nuova, Dante
In the baffled light of the study,
he traces a journey across the antique map;
before him, mysterious terrain unfolds.
Swept into discovery, he crosses
physical boundaries:
swift rivers carved into the earth,
wide-swept plains fanned
by golden panicles of grain,
mountain ranges, their snow-laced scarves
spanning continents,
and oceans with wind-stressed waves
spun high into foam.
Sailing sidewise by northward,
sunfire into sunset,
he crosses a border, slipway
into a new geography.
Beyond compass point of north or south,
beyond windy cherubs with puffed cheeks
blowing their news to the opposite world,
beyond the realm described as Mauvaises Terres,
he follows longing, dreaming
a presence, Beatrice to his Dante,
binding him perpetual hierodule in Love’s
glassed temple.
No pastel geography, no charted seas
bring her closer.
He has known her; he has never known her.
He has sought her; fled from her.
In silken folds of pale poppy, she floats through
his imaginings.
The quest, not the prize, spurs his wanderings;
his heart, velvet moss, trapped,
beneath a stone’s opacity.
About the Author
Ann Power is a retired faculty member from the University of Alabama. She enjoys writing historical sketches as well as poems based in the kingdoms of magical realism. Her work has appeared in: Spillway, Gargoyle Magazine, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Loch Raven Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals. Her poem “Ice Palace” (The Copperfield Review) was nominated for Best of the Net in Poetry.