Unshipping

The poem unships me by the gateway of a dawn with no sea in sight
at the bottom of this entanglement of streets and threads of rain
whose beginning seems to emanate from a hill where clouds and steps
are busy, in the calm haste of those who have arrived or are about to depart
around a wide wishing well.

I’m at the center, strict, of this descent that ascends in my eyes
and as soaked as the earth which dresses my feet, but as naked, she
as I am, of everything that is not this gift of sensing ourselves as one
with the water and the air.

Down below, to where the fire of many prayers probably flows
my ears tell me that there are tall windows, framed in echoes of birds
whose songs have flocked beyond dreams still warm and still embracing.
How well I recognize all their voices, and from here, from this achromatic
limpidity, I send them the colours of my complicity in a smile, knowing
that they will brandish it like a rainbow in garland, and that under it
will they come out to seed, in fertile dance, blessed fates.

I rest, in the taste of some moments offered by another traveller
who takes them out of his provision bag wrapped in paper cuts
but which meet the thirst and hunger upon my lips in whole, uncovered words.

In the traveller’s hand I touch the soft yet firm perception that I must not
scatter and yet I must not hoard this offering with flavours, forms and cadences
so diverse.

We must, he and I, proceed, and share the courses found, such as they have
melded, here, our skin and breaths in reminiscences, impressions and hopes
at the center, strict, of this ascent that descends in our hands.

We bid one other farewell through no call but recognizing ourselves by the name
which does not define or encompasses us. And we resume the descent that ascends
to where the ascent begins to descend.

By the gateway of dawn, the poem awaits me, to ship me again.

And now I see, undeniably, not only sea, but also an infinity of sun
rising on top of streets unraveled and lines unfurled
expanding in the horizon and the wind.

We cast off, the poem and I, and with us travel all those visions
those reverberations, that taste of multiple hues, yet indivisible
and that plentitude which was bottom of well and apex of plea.

We are dressed in the ardent passion that faces the waves. And the night
framing us, is quite simply, the crossing of a gateway to other dawns
where time does not await us, for we take it and it takes us
in the hull and upon the sails: the poem, the fates seeded, the moments
ripened in words touched so that they will be shared
the other and many other travellers, and me.

Behind us, nothing remains that is not already and once more an advent, ahead of us.

© 2005 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®