SOMETIMES THINK

SOMETIMES THINK

Sometimes think I’m always

a life too late

to catch up to my own

walking away weary of waiting for me.

Or I’m a star too far ahead of my own shining

and that’s why it’s always dark.

I know the agony

in the stones of an abandoned bridge

that shoulders the world for nothing,

upholds nothing but its own mass

and waits for things to pass.

And even when I fall into the river

to flow along with my own mindstream

without consulting the leaves like maps

I still can’t get the moon off my back.

Look at all these orchards

littered along my banks

from the tent of a single blossom.

And there are nights

when I can smell snake on the wind

as if everything were about to happen again

and I still haven’t milked the fangs of the moon

for an antidote to the pain

or put out the third eye

of the irrational surveillance camera

that oversees the sorrows of the insane

when it’s full.

I like my perfections whole enough

to include what is not

and if I am immoderately empty

it’s so I can make space for the world

like the blood-sea of the rose

that flows out of nothing

into tides that shed their waves

like the eyelids, brides and petals

of a human heart.

My breath is silver.

My breath is gold

I’ve mined from the mystic mountain

that got in my way

whenever I tried to cross

the valley threshold.

I had to evaporate to rise to the top;

I had to get myself together like a cloud

to transform my own delusions

into a glimpse of the other side

that didn’t take a scapegoat for a guide.

Now space is my only familiar

and the being behind the face

of who I was a moment ago

is just another snake in the furnace

of this star that sheds my skin like fire.

Streams of insight

that are not predicated like mirages

on deserts of thought

trying to spin themselves

into mirrors and silks of glass

like a new religion

sweeping the world like sand

advance the gardens

of the water-givers underground

who teach the flowers how to bloom

and drown like stars

in the infinite opening of their eyes.

And I’ve mauled the nets of the constellations

like a man in the morning

walking through a high field

radiant with spiderwebs

and if there’s anything

left hanging in the wardrobe

that used to house my masks and cloaks

they’re veils I’ve torn from the light

to better see into my darkness.

I’m still looking

but nothing has appeared yet

and no sleight of mind

that’s ever mastered me

has ever taught me how

to realize the inconceivable

except in the proportions of a human

whose mere existence is utterly unbelievable

whenever I turn the light around

and discover the dispersing stars

I have followed so long and far

into the unborn darkness where I begin

shining within.

PATRICK WHITE