Little Shrine For The Disbelievers Poem by MARINA GIPPS

On the first step, a lost top unravelled
by a red ball of string. This is the heart,
held in the ferry of our hands.
We were told never to follow the unexamined path.
Reasons why the magnifying glass
was held to our palms under the sun
looking for a tattoo of hope
after being bitten by a mosquito.

Somewhere,
searching for weather in the flurries of a black hat,
one overturned canoe
we could tow with our lavender braids.
Instead, we skip steps to grasp the blossoms,
read their petals flattened out
to that fragrant storybook of the world's beginnings.
Pollen arrives in a parachute of wind.

The mystic on the radio, repeating his song of our sagas,
opulent beards of burnt money, twilight irises and freesia pupils,
daffodil eyelashes and faces of mud.
We become one with the stairs: up and downtrodden.
With the mind's corroded batteries of annulled guilt,
we correct ourselves for that final horizon,
so miraculously, if we should reach.