Saturday, November 2, 2013

Bubbleships



Bubbleships

And houses floating at three thousand feet
                Like red and yellow birds of paradise on slender stalks.

Odd to share such imaginings
                Decades after, and half the wide old earth
Blue and emerald at her girth. 

Your bubbleship was turreted however,
                With fast guns shooting blue fire
Darting like a dragonfly and shaped like one.

But that house!
                And the Haleakala sunrise
Burning orange rays bent into the liquid canopy
                Cloaking this ancient globe.
And a pool.  That’s a touch beyond me.
                But the red hair.  And English.
Full marks, Director.
                Who spoke to you, anyway,
And assembled the forgotten, dusty pieces
                Of a childhood spent in humid isolation,
Quiet and oppressive heat,
                Full of afternoon silence,
Broken only by the steady thrum
                Of crickets and cicadas,
And dreams of being cold. 

Why then, Maker, have you made mad men so
                Different, and at such distances, but with
Such common desire?  You are the Singularity in
                Which soul being has origin and end.

And I wonder at it,
                Under pale blue cloud free skies,
And dry, crisp air full of red and yellow and orange
                Lights.