LONG RIVERINE VIOLET SHADOWS

Long riverine violet shadows

snaking their way across the snow

like spontaneously confident brushstrokes on a white canvas.

Morning’s in its studio.

I’m at my desk.

And both of us were driven here

by our own free will

though the morning’s always

more gravely creative than I am.

There’s nothing sprightly about a limping iamb

that’s trying to wrestle

the angel in its way

without dislocating its hip

like a prophetic wishbone

that doesn’t know what to ask for.

But here’s a prophecy if you want one.

There will come a day

when you won’t want to know the future

and you will take your head in your hands

like the skull of the moon

and turn it around

so its dark face

looks down upon the earth

like the back of a mirror.

One day the wonder of being alive

will freeze like a mindstream

that’s gone deeply underground

like water on the moon

to keep from thinking

about the horror of what’s going on.

Cynics look into the future

and uncover the ancient ruins of their expectations.

The light festers like the ingrown hair of a solar flare

that screws up its spiritual compass

and turns back on itself

like a flower that couldn’t see the point of blooming.

The optimists look into the future

in an abundance of light

that rises like ghost bread

they’re always handing out to the dead

as if they were the most needy among the living

to be deprived of hope.

But ruining the future with hope

is no different than ruining it with despair.

But by far the host of humanity

keeps its eyes on the present

from the inside out

trying to be what’s not there.

They’re like lost trees that read their leaves like maps.

They’re like the wind trying to get a fix on where it’s going.

A voice taking singing lessons from its echos.

The shadows flow away from the light

like roads not taken

or the luckiest among the forsaken

who know

what’s most precise

about the cosmic paradigm

of the human mindstream

is that it doesn’t have a design

it ever squares with twice.

Emotionally

life’s a mood-ring

that changes like the colour of blood

or a reptile on a rock in the sun.

Intellectually

it’s a chameleon

that’s mesmerized

by its own reflection

in a palace of mirrors within mirrors.

But I put it to you gently

as if I didn’t have a voice of my own

when was the great sea of awareness

ever troubled by its waves

or confused by its own weather?

Don’t defame the shadows

because they’re trying to make their way in the world alone.

It’s the dog on the short leash

that’s trying its hardest to get away from home.

And you could just as easily read them

as a kind of poetic script of the light

written in a sacred alphabet

that evolved out of a secret insight

in how to delight in our own creativity

living in the moment

imagining what we might be

without knowing who we really are.

PATRICK WHITE