Footprints for satellites?
An old game. The Mayas knew it;
land forms camouflaged, star
charts, airy bestiaries, eagle, lama,
beastback mountain sides, white
pebbled Milky Way, an ancestral
footbridge. Look down or up,
backwards or forwards. Weirdly,
rotating our options, weighing odds;
caught in bristling cyberspace
or a stone corbelled chamber.
Either way, it’ll make you dizzy.
Once is as it ever was, ever shall be:
Gods walk out upon a path of stars.
*
Is recollection seeing anew,
old pieces, rearranged, seemingly?
Letting go of nothing suggests: -
(like) air conditioning, computer hum.
Waiting for nothing. Omphalos;
world-centre, mind nadir, still point
about which everything revolves.
God’s paper chase. Omphalos,
mind’s umbilical. Stone sunk
to bottom of the lake is memory,
incarnation. Mind skip back before
instinct saw dark eclipse. Sky shield.
Moon boss. Through vast chthonic
reservoirs, horizon, swept aside.
*
So. Earth’s most dramatic
‘bald spot’, (ozone hole) is down
to 15 million sq miles over
Antarctica as of Oct, 2002. Shrinkage,
Big Time. One year’s reading on
reduced cfcs doth not a trend make.
Is this happy hour? Fewer recalcitrants
maced? Hair-gel instead of hair
spray? Asthmatic winds rake pebbles
in dry Arctic valleys. Presidents
and dictators square off. Puritanism
v Tribalism. Doomsday’s a
syndicated affair. Life’s Good.
*
I wanted to reach my hand into
the side of that mountain.
The Romans waited, the Jews died.
Made a sacrificial altar,
such as Abraham had to his God.
A small cave, pocketed at the
base of Massada. Better death than
surrender - a courageous act
for living against the odds. Day
by day danger renews, retribution
neither diminishes nor goes
away. To every Age a new generation,
bigger weapons to sound the void.
*
Your breasts in the mirror,
still life of gourds. Bossed shields.
The white-washed room peeled,
flaked, wooden shutters opened
on the small harbour quay -
a restaurateur tipped his garbage
casually into the Mediterranean.
A night of fish bones, cigarette butts,
bobbed in an oily slick. West,
into shadow, Antnos anchored off
the headland, outboard silenced,
dynamite exploding like an octopus
under a shoal of fish beneath.
*