52-Pick Up May - Week 3

Reading Backwards, Pilgrims Happen Upon The Secret Map

This is how we read. Divining the miscreant,
slipping the knots of chronology. There and there—
in conversations with the dead
in sparks of bolt and wrench
above a moon keel-hauled by thievish company,
we dally. Become turncoats to order as a leaf falls
where it will. Long ago, we killed the navigators
of precise means and let caprice, the backward ghost
of slant, gather in the seams. As seer, it tells us,
tell us stories in bits and strings, gives us
tooth and tumbler, the wild figuring of sing.
So our caravan travels happily with the masked
bandits of sense. Cartographers affix small
dots of worship and pilgrims follow, discover far-
flung continents of pêche, orchards of bloom—a man
sobbing at the flicks. We lead him. We lead him right
to left. We sing him to the peach.