Blissed-out by exhaustion

Our heads buzzed with talk of escaping
dead-end jobs, family dramas, and towns
that held no surprizes. Our heads buzzed
with talk of pilgrimage, of travelling
the slow way, with blisters on our heels,
to the mansions of rock stars and city-
sized theme parks— the fifty-foot-tall woman
has a throne there; there are thrones for the green-
skinned orphans, and the babes with webbed toes;
a throne for the white tiger in the iron cage,
the folds of its crumpled face humming
with poetry. We lived for a time looking
forward to being in the greatest places
on Earth. We met the shawled women
and the men in brown wool shirts, the girls
and boys in cotton Tees with their hiking
gear on their backs, their limp sweaters,
water bottles, and bedrolls, and we walked
up narrow lanes as one tribe, to queue,
to pass over the same ground, to kiss
the extraordinary and to step away
feeling uncommon; to step away feeling
the slow burning euphoria that follows
momentous journeys. I leaned my walking
stick against a wall, and I felt love become
law, an imperative call to hug everyone.