It's another attempt at non-ideology.
Because I feel it's as Ponce de Leon,
as I imagine Ponce de Leon find-- he doesn't find water,
he doesn't find the elixir, and he doesn't become a young man
again.
But he does find something more valuable,
which is almost a cliche at the end of the poem,
but it has to be stated that way.
This is what he finds.
And hopefully we could all find as he's trouncing around
with machete in the jungle, and his crazy guide
looking for the fountain of youth, Ponce de Leon.
"Not so much by age, but the deliberate hardening of mind
turns us towards the grave.
It need not always be written this way,
barring a climactic dryness in the plot,
a spring ripples to the eyes, the throat parches,
trouble inside the head points dusty boots
in the wrong direction.
Sweat salted his armor, mosquitoes sucked his juices.
Tolerant with the half benign smile of a martyr,
he allowed the landscape, the sun,
the switches to exact their tides from his flesh,
his blood.
Like any Judas and Jesus, the guide
smiled then took the silver.
He knew the inside track, how to lead a fanatic in circles
by plotting straight.
If he were to receive the sacrament ever,
that day in the sea of jungle was not his day.
In the desperation of his beard, dismissing the guide,
he suffered the cruel shovel of his beard.
Alone with the heat, mosquitoes, squawking parrots,
he began burrowing hunter and the haunted beyond dreams.
With solid ground, he was really always after."