Pilgrimage
The river shanties share the water with
the milk snake, the tree frog, the
blue-spotted salamander.
The value of Solomon’s sparkling temple
is questioned by Lincoln Scarlet in a
journal article that lightnings across the
screen. In another, christening music and
certain pulpit intonations are thundered.
Scholar of the roiling molten core beneath
mundane mysteries, he argues a crabgrass
testament, a weedy faith in the whirlwind.
The palace is piped with credos prone to
breakdowns, flooded throne rooms and new
dunghills for the occasional Job. Listen:
Call-and-response, call-and-response!
Incense in the pews settling on summer
dresses and denim shirts, pomade hair
and the baby’s perfect fingernail.
The choir frog, the rough-legged buzzard,
the chimney swift.
Born in Ithaca to a rope-necked maiden, he
hurries Chicago streets with anarchic words
somersaulting in his skull, like a circus child
before the elephant. Can the garage rat
metaphor the Divine? Music the Magnificat?
Lincoln is stunted, solo, noxious, feral,
low, raw, rowdy and crude. He channels
Luther on the pot, Teresa in ecstasy. He
makes trouble like others bake wafers.
The long-tail weasel, the least weasel,
the sad-sun weasel.
Alarms and mists are the meat of
Lincoln’s day, steps beyond the line,
steps beyond safe knowledge — a garish
Wisdom walking the streets — a fraction
of knowing inside the cloud, exalted
undesign, wearing the weight of
puzzlement and full-throated chaos
while moving up the path.
Lincoln sits at the fast-food table with
slavers, liars and flesh-sellers, with
strutters and posers, with hard hearts
and the empty-minded, and traces on
the inside of his bones his own blight
and meanness. They leave together and
start up the cipher road as if they know
where their pilgrimage will take them.
The brown bat, the black bat,
the eastern red bat.
Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of eight poetry collections. His latest is a chapbook from Bottlecap Press called New Chicago. His book Every Marred Thing: A Time in America was the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize. He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Mud” was one of the winners of the 2026 Lost Penny Press Broadside Competition. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Long Poem, Blue Unicorn, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and other journals. His website: patricktreardon.com
