Six Seas

So, I wrote this on the train from Granada, and I figured I’d better post it before I leave Europe. Though I’m not sure the UK really counts as Europe anyway. I’m totally out of practice writing. This is the only thing produced this trip, other than a plethora of memories, of course. But I should write more.

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I heard the revolution would come as a war elephant, a wrinkled giant, ambling like an earthquake, shaking out fiery tears that light the way.

I heard the revolution would come as a kiss, as fingers passing each other up arms, holding what sight says is your own.

I heard the revolution would come as a whisper in the corn, a sunshine ripple moving outward.

Let it come as it will, and let it be beautiful; but let it come.

I’ve dressed as a soldier and waited at the depot, but of the train I saw only a rumor in the distance.

We are six seas of people, washed with a morphine sponge; a tear-tide of troubles traded to a pillow god. We are a march to mother, who absolves us from ourselves and carries each back to their shoebox bed: she shields us with the body of her tales. Where is the crumbling bedside edge?

Six seas of people, dusted with sixty thousand years of penitent patience, choking the air between us. What wind can clear away so much dust?

I’ve cried in the blue corner, waiting alone while shadows of snowflakes dance down the walls and crumble on the sidewalk. A thousand hands have brushed my back in passing,—and moved on: carried by a tide spun by the crab moon, who clicks his claws like castanets and dances in the desert dust between the oasis of each.

Well, if we are to be so far in the desert, then give me an army of camels, to speak with every pool and carry our burdens in a humped back. If we are to be a crab tide of thirst in a salt sea, then call the turtle who carried us here; and we’ll get on his back as he swims through starry waters to where it is whispered and called and spoken. Where the choked-up waters become a fountain playing in the sun, and the earth calls us to our second happiness.

I’m waiting to wake up and see what the swallows have made out of the old adobe, while we were weaving cobweb dusty dreams, and sealing our eyes with sleep. I am sure that it is beautiful, and full of all the colors borrowed away since we were children.

Let me find six tides together in that new adobe, and we’ll sing six shouts under a ceiling so high the stars come in at night. And when night finally finds us, let those stars shine brighter; as though the burden of another orbit has become full and happy.