Anemone
Earth's a baloon dangled
On a tether of time
From the porthole of god's spaceship;
The light and hum of living will depart
At night's end, a sonic boom
Bound for hyperspace.
From a smear of moisture on the maker's palm
We flower like anemones in quiet water, then uprooted
Journey within and within amongst molecules,
World into world, deceiving angels and avatars
Who thought to keep some stricter law empowered
Amid these unmapped badlands of wandering brief souls.
This tiny universe, so fragile, is intricate with memories,
Patterns printed, footsteps
Of our journeys through the mind;
A silver trail of electrons, rivulets of blood,
Angles, arcs, helixes, retreats and sudden lines
Of courage, as if our very form attracted hope
And made unseen a plan for life to be itself.
Do not scorn us! By wishing
We have seen a little, hoped for much,
And caught a hint of other passing spaceships,
For an instant also tethered light and time;
Yes, wrought a kind of glory with one power -
The will to know.
Thor, 2006
[ a much earlier, somewhat incoherent (!), version of this poem was written for Sister Rosemary Simone in Suva, Fiji 1984. .. she had suffered from my lectures on psycholinguistics and protested with a verse of her own ^_^ ... ]