Зимородок
Шрифт:
To where the land and the water
Meet.
It is for us to name the vessel,
To unfurl the flag,
To set course
Across an uncharted sea.
3. Exploration
It's a strange world,
made of echoing emptiness
pulling itself together…
To blossom into being
A new world needs travelers.
Now we are here,
Calling out to each other:
“Look!”, “Did you hear that?”,
“This feels just like…”
“Watch out!”, “Where does this…”,
“Well done!” “What if?”
Now we are here,
Exploring with all our senses:
Humor, awe, dread, irony, appreciation, wonder.
When we gaze up
Celestial bodies
Flare into existence,
Dance with each other.
Flocks wing across the sky,
Swarms billow over bogs,
The air comes alive
With singing, buzzing, courting, hunting, pollinating.
Each step we take tells us
What is underneath our feet:
Grass, ice, rock,
A swaying bridge above the mist
That rises from the chasm
To cling to our ankles.
I do not know how far
We are destined to travel.
But I trust this world
To keep unfolding space and time
For our journey of exploration,
For as long as we are here.
4. Siren song
…you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them.
Sirens have two kinds of songs
To lure those who come near them,
To bind the minds of travelers
With snares of longing.
Songs of adventure and of glory,
Of giving names
To new lands, to new creatures.
These songs promise freedom
From the tedium
Of familiar words,
From the confines
Of the cradle, the field, the hearth,
From the gray stones of the graveyard,
From the moss that steals over the names
Of a long line of ancestors.
Songs of warmth,
Of embracing arms and sheltering walls.
These songs promise to turn
The terrors, the regrets
Of past voyages,
The uncharted vastness of the future
Into words, into lusty tales
That can be traded
For a hearty tankard of ale
A seat close to the fireplace,
The eager gaze of a rapt listener.
5. Nightmares and their riders
I have nightmares now.
I dream that something happened to you…
A nightmare is a kind of horse:
A powerful creature, wild and willful.
Approach her with respect, with skill,
For she may bite, kick or rear;
She may leave the one who dares to touch her
Broken, paralyzed, dead.
Yet she is capable of learning to accept a rider.
Balancing on the back of a nightmare,
Riding a dark dream,
We can leap much farther than is humanly possible.
A nightmare can carry us across an abyss.
6. Trains and their dreamers
The train stitches together images,
like a demented alliterating seamstress…
The distant clatter
Of the predawn train
Quilts the quiet air,
Pulls the thread of the whistle
Long, long, l-o-ong
Through the mist.
Between sleeping and waking
I dream.
I piece together
Stations, timetables, tickets
To choose my own destination,
To fashion a different self.
7. Synaesthesia
There are times in life when synaesthesia becomes inescapable,
when water smells like lead and feels blue…
Escape is possible.
Search the floor of your perception,
Feel for the hidden trapdoor,
The moment of synaesthesia.
Pry it open,
Heave it up on its rusty hinges.
Plunge into the blue.
Roll up, solid, dull,
Like a ball of lead.
Sink through the water,
Pass through the gradations
Of the shimmering light
Deepening into darkness,
As the shadows thicken.
Let go of all
That has been visible.
Feel the weight of the ocean
Press you to the bottom.
Smell your own fear.
Taste the bile of loss.
Rise, rise like an air bubble.
Push through the cool resistance
Until you are released,
Until you burst into nothingness.
Let the freedom of empty space
Flood your senses with joy.
8. The Age of Discovery