Sometimes Life…

Past Ara*

April 2009

 

I have always known I was tied to the sky by some invisible umbilical

through the clouds to an immeasurable somewhere with no boundaries

where my voice is singing much larger than myself.

I’ve had moments of remembering, echoes in my chaos,

glimpses of daring where I couldn’t help but let go.

I’d find myself soaring and suddenly

I knew more and saw more and had more in my heart to give.

Flashes, glances, brief and still

faded photographs from a childhood lived a million years over,

a million years past.

 

But someone, something, wants me grounded,

on the earth, in the dirt,

planted and packed hard in a garden of their choosing.

But I don’t want my feet planted, I say,

and I don’t care how dark and lovely with minerals your mud may be.

I don’t want to grow your life. I want to grow mine.

I want to grow back to where I came from:

suspended by stars,

breathing blameless air,

flying the silky-stringed trapeze of my highest hunger,

lapping up raindrops before they ever fell to slake your dusty earth,

chanting songs in my native tongue before music ever reached your recollection,

leaping one beam to the next, past Ara, drenched in the mist of my own curiosity,

back to rope swings by star light and hula-hooping Saturn’s rings,

Laughing again in the glow of my once lost moon

 

 

*Latin: altar. A southern constellation. In ancient greek mythology, it was thought that the Cyclopes orginally built the altar as a place to sacrifice to the Olympian gods. The altar was identified as the altar of Lycaon. Lycaon sacrificed a child to Zeus on the altar on mount Lycaeus, and immediately after the sacrifice was turned into a wolf. In other greek tales, Ara was identified with the altar of the god of wine, Dionysus.

In: Poetry | | #