Musty Light

28.07.10

Dream-grey afternoon in the ballroom of a French colonial mansion
turned library. I sit in dim cloud-light, draped in musty silence,
feet on marble-cool floor, hemmed in by knowledge—termite-riddled,
reposing in the hall’s glooming arms; snatches of wisdom tucked into its long-frayed sleeves—

drowsing over a book, fingers slow-slipping through my hair, ‘til suddenly
a moth—and my heart—flutter up in sleepy surprise.
It had been napping in my hair, the moth. Having flickered
out of dark corners of history, of adventure perhaps, and settled,
still sleepy, in the fragrant-flowing dampness of my washed hair.

A moth in my hair? —I panic. Perpetually afraid of growing into a mouldy derelict, scarfed
with a sleepy whiff of history, perfumed with shadows of oblivion
for a ghost moth to haunt. . .
No. Perhaps it mistook the gloom for nightfall, venturing out to the sole tender light in the hall?
Glimmering insight of a youthful mind?

Light of wisdom comes to age, they say; as do moths.
Couldn’t the glow of infant wisdom draw moths and age, I wonder?
But it’s sombre here, and musty; stray thoughts too dreamy to mean.

Home

22.07.2010

Don’t you cry, love. Tomorrow
you shall rise naked and wild and strong
and fiercely brilliant
and make the world your home!
O’erspill wall-boxes, brim over into the storm.
Mould yourself to awkward spaces, flow into the unknown,
become the new, let strangeness become you,
teach your spine to fit all trees,
forget yourself to yourSelf.

What? Still clinging to an old pile of bricks? Why, ’tis but
sandy clay slapped round the Spirit and baked, hugging you,
a little too tight perhaps, leaving you frantic, gasping.
No need to lug it about as do those slumber-shelled garden gypsies.
Fly instead with the intense world-winds, led by that fine silken thread
Unravelling from within.

Pat Life on the back, prop your legs across its lap, pillow yourself upon
its breath, breathe.
Learn it consciously, casually,
like secret places of your body and cosy family smells,
the intimate taste of a lover’s drowsy breath
and your own bizarre thoughts (that see a kinship between the number nine
and your mother’s lips);
stray notions bobbling about your mind, holding water (just for you)
yet not quite sinking.

Uncork your Soul, let it foam out in a sparkling whisper
of Truth, immutably unbound, even
while all sleeps in the dreaming, teeming earth.
Turn your roots within.