Along the Way
John Milkereit
October 5, 2025
1.
What does it matter to cross an ocean?
The struggle of living can hide in a tomb
while I’m gone. To fly over the Alps
with baggage, awake, fastened in
the little shell of a seat. I’m green,
a pistachio.
2.
Grin on street stones
under white wisped blue
sky, behind the heavy door,
a hallway and marble flights
of stairs in silence, solid.
3.
Kumquats yellow in a tree. Did dreamers
secure future romances to blossom
forever? Young love in flux.
Fastened padlocks around a streetlamp
on the oldest bridge spanning the Tiber.
I thought of my fractured architecture.
The marine pines stand, imposing.
Was this Mussolini’s robust outlook?
4.
Romans accept summer early,
pedal bikes. Spiral down to
exit a labyrinth, or so I thought,
but then entering the dark sphere inside
my outside peeled off. A cracked
sculpture.
5.
In Ostia Antica, the mosquito grass
acts like a sentry for cobbled benches
without disturbing the other grass.
Ally of sedges and cattails at the train station.
I want a soft brush to clean my ventricles
and synapses. I feel unwashed.
6.
Pink geraniums flourish in clay troughs,
Petals in the catacombs—memos
to my psyche. A bright patio. I know
my dirt will not stay ruined.
I will return as beautiful as before.
7.
The gray-green sea glistens, mature skin,
rippling, a curtain hiding what’s underneath.
Rescue boats arrive and then do not. Herculaneum.
Emergency’s long gown becomes carbonated wood.
8.
Volcanic stone path, red poppies
sprout—gentle voices, mosaic
diaries steam out, a bath house.
Don’t worry tonight, Pompeii.
White bits of limestone
embed the road home.
9.
A girl is pushing a pink stroller
in Terni, near a fountain.
She leans over the ledge as if
for a baptism, a mirror.
10.
Poets stay at La Romita birthing
poems. Inside the sheep pen,
two newborns arrive and rest in hay.
No escape from the mattress-spring
gates. Under olive trees, cut wood
in small piles is ready to burn.
11.
In Spoleto, a cat shades
under a white van. Then prances
ahead as if to say, follow me,
I’m the priestess of this church.
Enter. Confess. Forgive.
12.
Listen to a droning organ concert
or
unfurl a paper scrap
to win a miniature nativity scene (cut
under a pine arch, splotched snow, ceramic
gold star, white tea candle).
Which trinket is the better deal?
13.
A sparrow lands, cheep-cheep-cheeps
from the window ledge.
The world yearns
beyond the cypress.
Awaken. It’s morning. Again.
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas, working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Ekphrastic Review and The Comstock Review. His fifth collection of poems is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.
