13 July 2015

13

A Life’s Long Journey-Work

I’ve got to go outside right soon; for near another Moon’s eclipse,
a Sun keeps homing in; keeps gliding far too near; a sentence trips
from off a tongue that’s not my own—and not a sequence I could want.
Just don’t only understand; it’s twisted, and it seeks to haunt

the magic that keeps singing, singing loud as morning blossoms through
a world of springtime, whilst we lie awake and toss and turn and view
the future through the dreadful cast of lies before and after—here.
Lay your little warm hand back of my wet neck, and say, No fear

can call you back from out of time, for timelessness is where we are.
Fate has proven groundless; we’re a common set of eyes a star
trained gently whilst, in widely-spoken parlance, bright as full-Moons’s lore—
I shall lie down lonely, then wake up with you. She’s who keeps score;

he’s who you’ll want to be and greet when after-evenings draw down dark.
Down the darkened shallow doorways, alleyways beyond the park
where fruit-trees blossom, swaying shade on shade like branches bearing limbs—
Make me go to church where only angels sing beyond false hymns,

then tell the lonely angels who remain, we’ve loved them long; we’re well
acquit of those who only want to tell the world it’s gone to hell;
sometimes souls seek out perdition; ours have cast it off so long,
life’s a job of journey-work to turn mind into real live song.

Little, softly fingered hand who holds my own with such wild trust,
I shall surely fail you—as my own hand trailed away, and dust
secured it through a passageway that makes the sad lungs climbing here
hold out for fear of breathlessness—for fear of taking on new fear—

for only wanting, really, in the end to breathe love’s scented hand,
and hear me hum beneath my breath the song of love’s first table-land,
and then to hear—beneath the deep green passageway new dreams will find—
You’ve heard your own and only voice, its singer, and love’s kind, so kind.

Walk down by the morning tide’s high watermark, and watch the waves.
Swaying in and out, we’re children viewing our own open graves,
yet really feeling—deep, reverberating—steps to come: Let’s dance;
no hanging back; I’ve got to lie down. Journey work: We’ve cast-iron pants.