Poetry: Sojourner

Sojourner

Backward foam is offered up by Venus
and a blacksmith, fallen to the sea,
only to return
it there, finding in its deepest black
the spreading -- continents spreading from Africa.
Burdened an searching, Isis

straps on her sandals, brave Isis
is searching in the night. Pale Venus
light guides her out of Africa,
through the delta to the sea.
It waits in fish black
for her return.

A return
of the leg, Isis
finds it, of the black,
coarse hair, she finds it. Fish have swallowed Venus,
fat, decapitated, out of sea,
into an Austrian tomb, a Slovakian tomb, across Africa

to a tomb, not Africa --
off cliff face, into water and foam, a return
to the sea.
In trees and under sand, limbs gathered; Isis
places them like pineapple in a basket, but Venus
rests belly deep in black,

in fish guts, a black
pearl first: Rodinia first, Godwana second, Pangaea third, Africa
fourth. First, Venus,
second, phallus, then Osiris erected upon his return,
the old leaf phallus cast by Isis,
the flesh lost out to the sea.

Into the foam, Isis went, into the sea
to find Venus, rescue from the black.
God will have to satisfy Africa, the flesh won’t return

~ By Robert Balkovich ~