LAGOON LINES

 

The familiar vacant into the vacant,

into pearly light,

sky dots and drops

still and blind.

You’ll never know how much

appeased in blindness,

accomplished in stillness,

they never tell you

and your gaze is accustomed

to let questions hang,

to let answers feel useless.

You gaze into the pearly haze,

at the blurred line that divides

horizon from sky.

A boat in the distance

moves ripples blown along

like piano keys,

like the fugue of a breath on a sheet.

On the tops of some poles by the banks

there are spheres, don’t ask me

about their purpose, don’t ask me

while you are seeing me

in my own pearly, blank sea,

while I am setting free

lagoon lines that gently cry and sleep

in the pool of my own reverie

where I just would like

to forget and wade and glide.

 

Even if it’s not forgetfulness my plea,

it’s the lagoon’s face that spreads and stays,

that points at a fading although it never leaves,

in the pool of a gaze that seems to erase

any distinction between being and not being

while it rests in the unknowing.

So, on the tops of the poles there are spheres

and on a sphere there’s often a cormorant,

head, beak, tilted slightly on high,

breathing the pearly, blind light of the sky,

piercing the blur of dots and drops

and the blurring in the blur of the horizon line.

The water mirrors a smoothness

centred on its own featurelessness

and the cormorant’s eyes are still

although, if you come close, you can distil

a shiver in them, the sharp

infinitesimal spark

of a dream.