SPIDER IN THE DOORWAY

Spider in the doorway of a small aircraft

I’m holding my own like a furious flag against the wind

leaning backwards out of a small aircraft

wondering if I’ve got a parachute on.

Here we go again.

Free-fall.

The baby bird dropped from the crow’s beak.

Eggs smashed like like young spring suns

that didn’t make the grade

their yellow haemmorages spread like laundry

to dry on the rocks below.

Some thief wrecked what it was trying to steal.

A waste of good birds.

Forensics of the absurd.

No one’s ever been convicted by the laws of nature.

The hawk walks.

It was a sanctioned hit.

Nature heard a rumour they were about to sing.

The worm turned

and they died with wild canaries in their mouths.

Falling from an airplane backwards

not knowing if you’ve got a parachute on

is the seed of a dandelion on the wind

wondering how it’s ever going to bloom

is a kid on a ten metre board

learning to trust the water

and the unearthliness of his first black flip.

It’s good to have a cherished delusion or two

come true every once and awhile.

Everybody’s got to leave their cozy little nest sometime

and learn to fly for themselves.

Daring said feathers

and falling took flight.

Or was it fright running from a dangerous appetite

to the end of a branch that let go of it like fruit

that made it take to the air?

There’s more compassion in wings

than there is claws.

but it’s hard to know if nature

is working under laws of its own origination

or if Lycurgus brought them back like wolves from Egypt.

The Spartans slaughtered their helots once a year

to keep their numbers down.

And spring’s got blood running down its spear as well.

I’m trying to fall toward paradise.

As above so below

but sometimes I feel as if I’m plunging toward the planet

like a meteor about to embed itself in the earth

as a cornerstone of hell

with a nuclear winter for an afterlife.

Apres moi.

Mammals.

Species extinction.

Insane alchemists playing scrabble

with the genetics of the brain.

New life forms in a black spring

whose myths of origin

are someone else’s eulogy.

Life advances at its own expense.

It gets up in the morning

and puts its shoes on

the right one a cradle

the left a grave

and it walks that way between birth and death

down a long road it never takes twice.

And it never stops at the garden-gate

to ask where it’s going.

It keeps to itself like a stranger in passing

and takes its own advice.

It acts without faith or knowing

and everything that lives and dies

is its accomplice.

Robert Frost once wrote

you worship the great god of flow

by hanging on and letting go

and that’s o.k. if you’re an apple

but what if you’re a cloud or a bell

or a wishing well

or a man without a parachute

in the armpit of a plane

feeling the need for unlimited space

and a suspension of gravity

because he can’t walk upon the earth

without being crushed under his own bodyweight?

The poignancy of the absolute

cannot be diluted by a relative truth.

And you can’t hide behind a lie

like the eyepiece of a telescope

that got turned around in the womb

and call that aloof and indifferent

that you hold at arms length

as if deep space weren’t already in your face.

Been gone so long it looks like home to me.

But that doesn’t mean I’m the prodigal son.

Icarus could just as easily fall out of the sun

like the flightfeather of an eyelash

that mistook all that flapping for wings.

You never know when it comes to letting go

whether things are looking up

or bottoming out

and there’s no place on the ladder that’s secure.

But in between the rising and falling of things.

In between this thought moment and the next

that contradicts it

in between one heartbeat and another

in the womb of the great mother

it answers to like a tiny drum

echoing the pulse of her thunder

there’s a freedom of disbelief

that fills me with wonder

that when nature abhors a vacuum

it summons someone like me to fill it.

When the sky’s a bright vacancy

I’m the black mirror of the dark abundance

that comes like Johnny Appleseed to the clouds

and gets in their eyes

like the cinder of a dragon that makes it rain

only to be washed out by the tears

of resilvered mirrors

renewing their virginity.

I’m the emergency shadow on stand-by

that gets called out at all hours of the night

to substantiate the alibi about the whereabouts of the light.

Great oak trees from little acorns grow.

And every quiet little getaway

is the start of a another great escape from prison.

A break in the wall.

A crack in the egg.

A trail of concrete breadcrumbs

a blade of grass follows

like the only path to freedom

for a sword impaled in a stone

that has to pull itself out by its own bootstraps

to keep anybody from declaring themselves king

and taking matters into their own hands

like who lives

and who dies

and who stays at home and cries

and every now and again

in exotic instances like me

who flies from the chain like a missing link

that doesn’t want to be connected to anything

that’s earthbound.

I’ve got more lightning in my roots

than boots on the ground.

I’m a starwalker.

I’m a night stalker

in the spirit’s lost and found.

It’s pleasant I agree

to watch how the happy apple falls

not far from the tree

and quote Shakespeare as an authority

that ripeness is all

but sometimes an apple’s

just a lump in your throat you can’t swallow

and screwing your courage to the sticking point

you jump to clear your voice

of old words that ring hollow.

You look your worst nightmare in the face

And for a few brief lifespans of light

on the way down

you’re a dragon

a phoenix

a gryphon

who stares the snake in the eye

until it’s Medusa that turns to stone.

You’re a visionary on a mission.

You’re the warrior minstrel of the forlorn hope.

You’re astral travelling in the ether

like a joy-jockey leaving vapour trails of stars

like extraterrestrial landing strips

on the Nazdac plateaus of the sunset

as you hover over your poor corpse

struggling on life support

to sustain its misery.

You can’t teach a bird

caught in the throat of the chimney to sing

by burning old loveletters addressed to the spring.

Any prophet who’s ever done time in a furnace

will tell you.

You need a phoenix for that.

It knows more about ashs than a crematorium.

Why go to the added expense

of a plot and a mahogany coffin

when you can fit whole aviaries of morning larks

and all their lyrics

into a reuseable urn?

Chimney sparks.

Fire-pollen.

O how the mighty have fallen.

PATRICK WHITE