Novel Cartography Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have given a good report of the mountain
To the general and his staff;
And now I must lay out with all my truck and belly
For the east;
For when I summited and had my lunch, it occurred to
Me I was not seeing god there in untracked highways
Of boiling air, not so much as what I caught from her;
A glint from a sharp ankle, I think,
An elbow like soldered glass, turned in my way as if
Giving a signal of hope strung near the redacted sea:
My tongue spoke as if in its own entity,
Clacking the palate behind me teeth, like trusses on
A railway; a mollusk who has caught the cuff-
A silken smoke signal, a whiff of a soda fountain as it
Makes love to a beauty parlor: She was a waitress moving
In her stuff; but you see, I am not sure, Major, and that is
Why I do not come when called to revelry,
Because I can’t anymore fight an enemy impervious to
Anything but vapors and hearsay: she has given me a good
Reason to start a memoir underneath the shadow that
A heron blooms out to lunch strutting against the dustbowl
Sky; If you wonder where I went, its to the east,
And what for, this is why: She startled me like a sound which
Gives harmony to a mottled soul; it resonates now.
She may have already struck
Other fools panning for her illusive gold,
But until I get there, harping thus, she should be a novel
Cartography setting out from dawn to dusk, serving brilliant
Platters to love-struck tourists waddled inland to the sea,
Along the same path I now truck to see.