I APPROACH THE ANGER OF MY INNER CHILD
I approach the anger of my inner child
with the smile of a Buddha and let the
squall
blow until it burns itself out like a
field fire,
defaulting into my second innocence,
more experienced than the first to
fall.
Everything is looping progressively
backwards through time.
I do what the stars do. Blue through
red, I shine.
I grow huge. I implode. I go supernova.
Then I’m blind as a black dwarf that
will come
of all of this. I lay my ashes on the
roots
of the roses and say make what you can
of me.
Pour a portion of your cup back into
the river
you drink from in tribute and gratitude
for what it’s given you. You take.
You die.
You receive. You live. But it takes
years
of coming back to life to try again
to learn how childishly simple this is
and how enlightening it is to be
mentored by the rain.
Bless your ashes as a gift of the flame
that burns in you. Return yourself like
dust
to the long road as lost as you were
you
firewalked with like a companion who
never
said a word, but trusted you to guess
where you were going and followed you
like a shadow as if nothing were left
unsaid.
Dead is dead. Whatever death is, even
if it’s more of an is not than
anything
we won’t have the imagination to wish
for
like eyes of dark matter that keep the
light
to themselves, the photonic spheres
of our skulls in blackholes and our
femurs
more like firesticks than peacepipes or
bird bone flutes.
If you’ve got a soul left worth
speaking of,
puts wings on your urn and learn to
transmigrate
in the bodies of Pythagorean birds or
Iranian angels
as if you had a message written on the
wind
that clarified the medium it was
encoded in
without any preconditions upon your
imagination.
You write it. It writes you. Starmaps
and dice.
You’ve got to roll your bones like an
avalanche
at least once. Bit by snake-eyes before
you clear the table like a house of
Tarot cards.
I’d be nine in the fifth place if I
were the I Ching.
I would do it all differently to keep
it the same.
I’d be an event instead of a thing.
I’d be as obvious
as the sky in my sophistication. More
stoutly good,
perhaps, than spiritually uplifting as
if that
were the easy path of a godless man’s
insistence
upon evil, when it’s more a matter of
perceptive error
when you begin to distinguish between
mirages and water
and who has access, and who does not,
to your housewell.
No heaven to aspire to. No hell to
avoid.
No narrow bridge over a dizzying
height.
No mystic vertigo at a Sufic
crossroads.
The dark shines as fearlessly as the
light.
Take a human pride in the night
that has fashioned you out of its own
starmud.
The dark mother who knew the colour
of your eyes before you did. The one
you showed her, and the one you hid
like a private life at the back of your
head.
And if you’re taken by surprise the
way
an osprey seizes a snake and finds it’s
grabbed a dragon by the tail, or an
Aztec
takes hold of your heart as a sacrifice
to a plumed serpent, don’t squander
your superlatives on things you didn’t
mean to say.
Be diamond. Be aquiline as Al Tair in
Aquila.
Don’t waste your eyes on pedestrian
jewels.
High in the mountains of the moon,
pursue
an earthly excellence like the sport
of a peasant king or queen in exile.
But remember,
any valley you might find yourself
wandering through
like a nightstream seeking its
equilibrium in low places
isn’t a grave plot to overthrow you
as you approach the sea with your eyes
wide open
and no summons in your hand you’ve
been asked
to answer for. As if your silence
weren’t witness enough.
PATRICK WHITE
