Further Consequences

Midway on my journey, I woke and saw
That with my every step the landscape was

Transformed. Pebbles in the distance grew to stones
And those stones swelled to boulders. Ant hills rose

To mountains. Seeing, I saw, was a language
All its own. Once I passed, the mountains fell

And turned to dust, to memory, and there
I was, at long last, in the land where the sky

Is its own kingdom. I was rich with joy
And joyous in my wealth. A decade later,

I reached the outskirts of Nirvana, a quiet,
Dusty town of white clapboard houses and

Its one four-way stop at the intersection
Of its only two streets. By then, it was

Afternoon. The air smelled a whiff of either
Rain or drought, although neither the clouds

Nor wind would say for sure, and then I knew
Nirvana had just what I needed: a red-

Striped barber pole, a liquor store, a simple
Bungalow with its windows open and

A homemade room-for-let sign in the yard,
And there, sound asleep in his black-and-white,

A cop dreaming of sundry elsewheres, dreaming
In that odd way that shapes clouds into gleaming

Palaces, giraffes, a steam locomotive,
Its smoke puffs repeating here here here . . . Here,

I saw, I would find true happiness. Hello,
I called out, hello, and every door opened

And everyone and her brother and his
Sister came out to greet me. I shook hands

Until my arm fell off, which was, me being
Right-handed, unfortunate. But although

I was poorer in body, I was richer
In spirit. Everyone brought bottles, poured,

And toasted my arrival and we clinked
Glasses and two clouds changed places and the wine

Was so sweetly dry that I wept and was
Soon made whole and handy again. But where

Is the challenge in simply arriving, even
Here? Where is the challenge in happiness?

A few decades in the wilderness, a few
Years without food, a few months dragging myself

And my broken leg out of a ravine
Populated with wolves—shouldn’t a quest

Entail more hardship than that? And behind me,
Empires had fallen into disrepair,

Their greatness become its own mausoleum.
What is any happiness worth that comes

Without cost? I drained my glass and already
The wine was vinegar. The future offered

Nothing more than days in a cotton robe
And slippers and the morning paper announcing

My undeserved indulgence. There, just two
Steps out of town, lay a path that would lead

To the furthest edge of the world where lost
Sailors tested their skills and ship against

Giant twining serpents and the great abyss
—The wreckage of ambition, damn me. Ah,

I couldn’t help but think of that cop dreaming
Of elsewhere. Yeah, that cop, he had it aces:

Having arrived in Nirvana and drunken
Its wine, what else would I do but depart?

Jeff Mock is the author of Ruthless. His poems appear in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, New England Review, The North American Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He directs the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University.