An Inch of an Odyssey
I like Taoist thought. You know, yin and yang, light and dark, how they always balance and counteract each other. I also love the idea that all distance is the same relative to infinity. This poem explores these ideas a bit.
An inch of an odyssey takes infinite time
Forever toward it
Forever undone, forever undone, ever undone
Assuming an end is presuming a beginning
Look where you’ve been. You look! You see!
Then wonder “Where on earth am I going?”
Preparing for death frees the wind
to sigh, breathing a soft, new breeze
blowing a tender new bud, unique seedling
Our days and our nights
Swallow each other whole-
Lune lusts for shadow chased Helios
There is no up, there is no down,
Nor back to the belly, nor the crown.
Only forward we lean to fall, grind, roll,
Heave atop the vanishing moment
Hop the lilting merrygoround.
Maps crumble into soot
pinched thin by greasy fingers
peddling false, painted mirrors.
Furrowed, worn paths fell us safely
To known, well trodden soil, dense, smooth, glossed
Away from the path to the effervescent fields
The path through the marshes, ripe, rank and raw
Away from the path beyond to gardenia festooned hills
There is no end, no beginning
Day and night flashes-
Tingling fragrant sparks
In our hearts.