I STAND LIKE A TREE

I STAND LIKE A TREE

 

I stand like a tree rustling its leaves

among all these voices

that gust through me like winds

that don’t know where things

begin or end

like the smoke

of forgotten candles.

I’m still asleep,

deep in a dream

alone with everyone else

but me,

and my absence

tastes like space.

I’m drunk on the wine of enlightenment

that spills from the grails of the black holes

like accidental haloes

I can hang on my horns

like the rings of a tree

or the water ribs

of the target I made

with a great splash

the last time I jumped in.

Thirty years ago

I took up bull-vaulting

between the crescents of the moon

and enjoyed the quiet eloquence

of the scars I won

like a language of my own.

I can’t remember the last alphabet

that invented me

like a periodic table

of elements that had

never been seen before

and a few that were crucially missing,

but now, if I’m included at all,

I’m written into things

like a river at night entering a sea

that not even the stars can cross

because it’s as wide as the mouth

of the whale of emptiness

that lives on the krill of their light.

I wasn’t enjoined

to deliver a message to anyone

when the abyss rose up like a comet of water

out of the darkness

and swallowed me whole.

And I’ve been making up stories ever since

in the hopes that it will let me go.

These days I vandalize it from the inside

under the bridge

with spraybombs of cosmic graffitti

that are a lot more honest than my prayers.

 

PATRICK WHITE