Until the revolution
I will be following, struggling after the light
that's over the horizon
the you that never leaves me,
never finds me
and has no track or colour
yet you are passing through so much
journeying so far
to send a glow from cell to cell
in the amber glare of a tiger's eye
as it burns through the grins and masks
of detached privilege
in the churning glaucous sheens
that roll from the fluke of the humpback whale
as it plummets deep
beyond what cannot plunge or enter.
While we who float,
like dark glass bottles,
stuffed with promotions, vouchers, slogans,
still dully glimmer
in the beam of your unseen star.
So this night demands full voice.
Then listen: I'm thirty stories up
and looking over a swollen highway –
and I'm numbing out beneath the roar
of one of a thousand herds of cars
as they grind on from debt to promise
while the southern continent burns
and the air thickens into bitterness
and a swarm of hungry zeroes stings my brain.
Killing a little, day by day.
So what can turn, still must.
A woman once would hold my head
until some sense came drifting back
on threads of rain and sky and trees
She too is gone. Of course.
But since I no longer search for justice
I will walk the woods
in these shortening days
and let those fine threads extend
between roots I cannot name
and a canopy beyond stark fact
devote them to a rising heart
so they might form a nest
among what's been trashed and must yet come to be.
So a ragged spirit can settle there -
and bravely chirp a canticle
to the horizon that keeps on dancing.