FIRST SIGHT OF THE PLEIADES

FIRST SIGHT OF THE PLEIADES

 

First sight of the Pleiades fletching the bent arrow of Perseus.

And there.

Just below it.

Aldebaran.

The red eye of the Bull.

The Coming of the Judge if you believe it.

And after all these years of looking

my heart is still startled by the rising of Orion

as if I had never seen it before.

As if the one thing that never ages is wonder.

More tooth in these abandoned fields now than root.

The silence less expansive and more to the point.

Charged with anticipation

that anything could happen at any moment

like an owl to a mouse

my breath stays closer to home.

The silhouettes of the leafless treetops

map the full moon like rivers

that run down into lunar seas

that long like water in a locket of ice

to know the freedom of an atmosphere again

that isn’t holding its breath

waiting for a day that never comes.

All the shadows are either running away from home

like some adolescent dream

of striking out on their own

or widows.

Strange.

In this frozen landscape

they’re the only things that move.

Cool shadow-water in the summer

sitting under the burgeoning trees.

And even when the mind is iced over

and the light like now

can’t seem to overcome the distance

between one moment and the next

and all of space has turned to glass

and all things are rooted in the past like symbols

still their shadows flow across the snow

like wavelengths of life

from deep out in space

that have traversed their ancient darkness

like postcards of intelligence

addressed to anyone who’s out here on their own

trying to make contact with themselves

whatever kind of alien they might be

to prove they’re not alone in the universe.

Though chances are

meeting some other life form

this far from home

would only make me feel

twice as lonely as I am.

The veils and thought-streams

of the aurora borealis

flowing through my crystal skull

are a lot less beautiful than my breath upon the air

but ultimate beauty is without distinction

and the fire isn’t judged by its smoke

and long before anyone spoke of unity

it didn’t make much of a difference

so I let things advance and regress as they will

like lighthouses and fireflies that just can’t stand still.

Let all things express themselves perfectly in the way they change.

Deepen the listening

if you’re looking for answers

about who you might be talking to.

The sum of ignorance is everything you haven’t learned to trust.

Wisdom is taking no account of this.

I hear voices that are not my own

when I walk with myself through the snow

out into a clearing in the starfields above me

just to make sure that no stars are missing

and they haven’t forgotten me.

And when the abandoned heron’s nest

in the fork of the dead tree

in the frozen swamp in the deep woods

asks me a question

about what I’m still doing here

so late in the year on my own at night 

I can’t answer for myself.

I let the wind make something up that’s possible.

Knowing it’s all the same voice anyway

whether it makes waves of light

or waves of water

waves of thought

or waves of words

or dances in a ice palace

barefoot on broken chandliers

that cut like honest mirrors.

It’s all just moonlight on the water

shedding her feathers like a swan

that’s flown well beyond here

like a summer constellation

that has no idea

of the absence in the eyes

of those who followed her down

into the western abyss of the mindscape

on the other side of the hills

like an unknown starmap

on the inside of their eyelids

that got lost asking itself for directions.

The lamp doesn’t ask the light where it’s going.

The stories that are told around the fires of earth

are warmer than those that are told

by the distant stars of heaven

however old they are.

And I’m as true

to the nameless voice that said that

as I am to my own.

It’s not a choice I make.

Its the path that takes me through the pathless snow

not as somewhere to go

but as the going

not as someone to know

but as the knowing.

 

PATRICK WHITE