I do not want to miss the wave
when mind unhooks, its skin peels back,
and every nerve speaks up, its soft fire flaring
like the sunrise that drags up a world
where shadows stare as the pathways fade
and light enters Earth, going deep and private:
just for the sense of being lived through.
Of surge and undercurrent; of being stirred,
as if by the beating of prehistoric wings.
That’s why I stand knee-deep in the eddies
of doing a life that’s coming undone,
while my brain’s figuring out what’s next, what’s next.…
But when days walk away and your people close down
then you have to reach up; up, and opening,
because – listen! – that brings you here …
where you’d swear the wheels of twittering starlings
are souls gone blessedly mad
in the overwhelm of being gathered and flung,
high into murmuration. Shaped with so much cry!
So comes the wave, the rising … and the jolting tug
of an inwards turn; then the grab and swell
of voices, sharp in their push to be heard –
as what’s felt crests, falls, and drains to the unspoken.
If there’s passage, it’s this.
It’s through this creaturely flood. To be engulfed –
and emptied, as what rolls in, rolls us over and out:
this ocean I thought we could cross.