LEARNING: FIRST SUMMIT
While the sky was plush I stood
When the land grew grown and buried
Still I left it understood
By lust and luck I loitered
I cast away my string
I sat and drank the beauty
Till I drank away the spring
I looked and lost a-many
I missed and marked a few
I stood to see men buried
I bowed to what was due
I crowned the least portune
Looking through the light
To where the darkness drew
On something past mention
Crafted of illusion
or nothing but the look.
I drew my eyes just over, to be sure that
it was there
And then I took the long road back
To where my life was bared.
I stood and met those many men
And all that dropped beside them
I footed hills and took the light
Until my finis mortem
I traded names, I measured time
I came into my final strings
And there let loose
The wail of fallen kings
A life is less of measure
Than some will ever dare
The light is nothing but a whim
Keep still to know what�s there
When silence crooks around my ear
And stars trick on the water
I dream to think in all the heat
A cool will ever wither
Wander there and here and then
upon my final pangs
renew the light in all its brash
circuit of misdealings.
Until I choose I find
Until I make I mend
Until I go I am carried
While I die I am dead.
7 October 2002
poetry ii. main