nedful things

Easy Writer had an announcement on her blog that was two-fold.  It was her birthday but she seemed more excited about the news that caves have been found on Mars.  Scientists have long anticipated finding caves on Mars, lava tubes formed by volcanoes, in which they might set up future human outposts on the red planet.  EasyWriter asked for poems for her birthday and so I wrote this one, contemplating the possibilities.  I hope she won't mind if I post it here as well - after all, a post is a post.

Artifacts

Deep within ochre walls,
A chasm of darkness.
Until that same light
That rouses sleeping Earth,
Slides neatly
Through ancient doorways,
Grazes the icy blanket
That once cooled forgotten fires
Where molten rivers flowed.

This is no Lascaux.
No artist lived to scrawl
His existence into the walls
of this desolate womb.
No figures play or die
across the surface of this hollow.
No scribe of antiquity
bequeathed sagacious scrolls.

In this cavernous outpost
Deep within foreign walls,
These new primitives are
Roused by the light as it
Slips into ancient cavities.
Their machines hum and whisper,
Their language a strange music
That echoes in the emptiness.
Their artifacts will wait,
For explorers yet distant.

I was asked the question: If you could decide how long you would live, how many years would it be?  My initial response was to brush it off lightly by saying "just long enough to finish the housework" but the truth is, I really don't know.  I am in no hurry to die, but the world is not a lovely place to live, not as it is, not as I now know it. But I didn't always know it this way, once I knew it as a child knows it.

If I held the keys to time, if I could bend it to my will and lengthen some days, make others rush by, I would make time give me more of my child's world.

I would learn the language of water on the banks of rivers rushing by me on their way to the sea and by calm lakes whose waters utter rebukes as they slap against the wooden beams of invading docks.  I would hear cries of seagulls who punctuate the bold speech of the ocean as it crashes to the shore.

I would spend many days in quiet places.  I would once again hear the whisper of a pine forest, muffling my footsteps, trapping sound in its thick, yellow carpet of needles as the trees plead for silence. "Hush, hush" they urge as the breeze brushes through their branches. "Listen, hush, listen, hush".

I would spend days under the summer sun, watching clouds being made and remade into childhood visions.  At night I would lie upon my back in the cool grass, grass that is thick and soft and hasn't been mowed in just the right amount of time.  The sky is limitless at night - a child with his eyes on the sky knows no limits.

But could I?  I wonder.  Once time has control and has chopped your life up into tiny pieces, each of which belongs to someone else, can you revisit the timelessness of youth?  How does one recapture forever?  Would I lie silently listening to nature as it explained everything to my soul or would my conscience interrupt with nagging schedules and things to be done?

Perhaps it is only in memory that time is vanquished. It may be that it is the escape that allows sanity in a world insane.  We gather beauty and store it, to be taken out and viewed when life gets too close. Perhaps it is not many more years ahead that we yearn for, but for the years now behind us.

Related Post:  Boston & Maine

Learning to breathe                                                                              
                          unnecessary                                             
it's
unconsidered, unstudied
yet measured precisely
its rise
           and fall
a predetermined sentence.
A blue insolence
puffs a cheek
shakes a head
to refuse
but a mocking gasp
cries out the deceit of will
calls me a liar


Objections not withstanding
                                          unheeded
this
unsecured, unruly
life, insists on its course
to rise  
              and fall
and though I deny it
The strong percussion
twixt collar and breastbone
resonates  within
A taut skin
played with skillful finger.
Sings like the confession
of one accused.