Somewhere in the Remote Arctic
Somewhere in the remote arctic there’s a vast sea of oval glaciers each set as if in ivory and extending across the expanse as…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Pf7zIQ6xY&hl=en]
I leap these giant salmon falls
like a vertically charging bull
wild eyes wide and blinkless in my
brute determination to get home
though it cost me my life
to bring life to life and the afterlife
and the whole world is doing the same
in my eyes
Look at it urging upward against the
downrush leap after leap its mouth agape
pulsating crouch springing forward
against the eternal wall endlessly ascending
Where’s the music to accompany this striving?
Is it the sound of these tons of water against me?
Is that the sweet symphony to my soul?
When I fall back with all my strength
I haven’t lost ground so much as
tested the resiliency of my intention
against all odds
Hear the held crescendo’s deep chord
in the distance?
The exhausted but victorious serene
and greater knowledge come
in the spent muscle of arrival
the last glad spasm
of success
5/14/2008 (from The Fire-Eaters Lunchbreak)