I took the long road out to the edge
Nobody told me
It would be shorter coming back
Nobody mentioned the rows of headstones
Like footprints in the snow
Nobody told me
My spacesuit wasn’t designed
For this outdoor life
So will I set these still-lives free?
Send them home for moon and me?
And will I have the eyes to see
That seeing in itself won’t set me free?
These jigsaw pieces form the skeleton key
To oxidised locks time encrusted
Bone chests contain
Somnambulist compositions
The awful weigh of pages torn
Freehand from sentiment’s thesaurus
Oh ghosts of chrysalis husk
Why regret the winged release?
Why hold forth in waves of light
The night that holds me yet?
This rigor, this mortal skyward finger
Of a past that holds no purchase
For the fisted digits that patient tap
A Morse code catechism -
An almanac of wasted days
On wooden top crematorium
Dust from smokestack skyward sent
Messages sketched in sand
Await approaching tide
Nobody told me
It would be shorter coming back
Nobody told me
It would be shorter coming back
Nobody mentioned the rows of headstones
Like footprints in the snow
Nobody told me
My spacesuit wasn’t designed
For this outdoor life
So will I set these still-lives free?
Send them home for moon and me?
And will I have the eyes to see
That seeing in itself won’t set me free?
These jigsaw pieces form the skeleton key
To oxidised locks time encrusted
Bone chests contain
Somnambulist compositions
The awful weigh of pages torn
Freehand from sentiment’s thesaurus
Oh ghosts of chrysalis husk
Why regret the winged release?
Why hold forth in waves of light
The night that holds me yet?
This rigor, this mortal skyward finger
Of a past that holds no purchase
For the fisted digits that patient tap
A Morse code catechism -
An almanac of wasted days
On wooden top crematorium
Dust from smokestack skyward sent
Messages sketched in sand
Await approaching tide
Nobody told me
It would be shorter coming back
November 2009
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