"Hodos," Greek, a traveled way, a road.
The idea of a woman as a road has a certain appeal.
I think of setting off along myself, boots sucking softly
at the mud.
The Greeks imagined the uterus hiking up and down.
The booted empty uterus, sniffing for blood.
And the virgin oracle set a stool above a volcano,
and squatted down, and Apollo entered her
through the vented fumes.
The two of them churned the road together,
until the mud was dust and her womb cried out
with a memory of what had never happened.
And then, as she floated, hysterical, inside herself,
the god would fill her jaws, and speak.
I think of a trail crumbling off a cliff in Hawaii, a charred
bicycle tire in a Hiroshima museum, a page from a diary
displayed behind glass with its own special lamp.
Journeys penetrate.
Afterward, song and the stench of burning from things
we thought were private.