I can hear crying all over the earth tonight,
sad children in the windows of their eyes longing for things
they dream of growing up to make come true,
fireflies in wishing wells the shadows drink from
on the moon where the spirit's lost and found dwells
like a small glove shed like a skin of moonlight years ago
as we grew out of ourselves like shells of the dawn in the morning,
waiting for some flesh and blood human hand
to loop back like a habitable planet in its second innocence
and come and claim us like life on Mars again.
The return journey of the morning glory to unmapped islands
we set out to explore, each to our own star,
like the lifeboats of newly-hatched turtles running
from the cosmic eggshells of our abdicated crowns of creation,
toward the abysmal shore of our oceanic aspirations,
each of us enduring the transformative initiations
of our shape shifting hearts on the thresholds
of the endless event horizons of the black holes and rainbows
that beguiled us with their joy and despair deeper
into the mirage of the music believing in this desert of stars
even here we could hear the mermaids singing,
and pluck pearls of enlightenment from the third eyes
of oysters open on the beach. Or the mouths of books
that had lost their place in the universe, left open
gaping in the sand at the incontrovertible signposts of the stars.
So many echoes from home you can't help but lose track
of your soul sometimes along the way trying like the rain
to better the world like a green tree ring pinging
the heart wood of a petrified forest like a tuning fork
or a witching wand that might break into blossom yet
if only we don't give up like grails and constellations
looking for the watersheds of the shining whether
they're dragons that swallow the moon to bring the rain
or the bell weathers of irreversible delusions
that fill the abyss with the elixirs and love potions
of our intoxicating affair with our own laughter and tears.
Over the course of the intervening light years
the lost flight feathers of many strange skies
under our wings, lonely prayers in the moonlit tents of the doves
growing like morning glory all over the childhoods
we abandoned like buckets beside the wells we fell into
like hourglasses of quicksand leaking out of ourselves,
like stars from the perfect bodies of contiguous time and space.
We're exalted in the midst of our humiliations. We're humbled
by the excess of our celebrations. We ghost dance against
the gathering thunderclouds of preeminent war
like a guild of sacred clowns and shepherd moons
on tour in protest against the bulwarks of gravitas
enslaving third world planets, and for a time, our hearts
feel like angry strawberries glowing in the starfields
as if Aldebaran had just blue-shifted toward the spiritual life
of the Pleiades, and were young again, the red flame
of the poppy in its blood that dreams of sustaining
and renewing life, even if it be just the tender green placard
of a leaf unfolding in the ashes of our urns, one
shy tendril of morning glory seeking the light
in the terrible stillness of an implacable abyss,
we are made young again, clear again, by the gusts
of a moody, blue muse of emotional hydrogen
flaring up in us like the inspiration for goblets and fountains
of cool white flowers hanging our bells and trumpets
like music growing all over the cedar hedges in the early morning.
Can you listen with your eyes? Can you see with your ears
how the ghosts of the stars walk the earth at night
in the flesh of flowers blooming like chicory along the roadside
in the blue irises of the eyes of September, or in gardens on the moon
left untended by the gentle rains of our imaginations
for more childhoods than there are watermarks in the heartwood
of the tears it took to get here like rootless trees
spreading across the earth like an unplanned pilgrimage
of exiled immigrants returning to the ancestral shrines
of their prophetic skulls burning like prodigal stars
in the spacious windows of our visionary homes?
Realizing at last, if nothing else from our insights into life,
the star-maps of the fireflies at the headwaters of our source
aren't bounded by the hearthstones of our wandering hearts
where the vagrants lay their heads down at last
on the hard pillows of the moon rocks they brought back with them
to dream of breathing new life into the lost atmospheres
of their childhoods returning like the lyrics of the night birds
to a wheeling mobile hanging like a windfall of planets
and dancing apples from the rafters and boughs of the ceilings
that couldn't keep the lid on the toy boxes of their bedrooms
or the hoods on the marvellous third eyes of the falcons
perched on the tree limbs of their telescopes in the corner
trying to see into the dark as far as the wingspan of their light will let them.
sad children in the windows of their eyes longing for things
they dream of growing up to make come true,
fireflies in wishing wells the shadows drink from
on the moon where the spirit's lost and found dwells
like a small glove shed like a skin of moonlight years ago
as we grew out of ourselves like shells of the dawn in the morning,
waiting for some flesh and blood human hand
to loop back like a habitable planet in its second innocence
and come and claim us like life on Mars again.
The return journey of the morning glory to unmapped islands
we set out to explore, each to our own star,
like the lifeboats of newly-hatched turtles running
from the cosmic eggshells of our abdicated crowns of creation,
toward the abysmal shore of our oceanic aspirations,
each of us enduring the transformative initiations
of our shape shifting hearts on the thresholds
of the endless event horizons of the black holes and rainbows
that beguiled us with their joy and despair deeper
into the mirage of the music believing in this desert of stars
even here we could hear the mermaids singing,
and pluck pearls of enlightenment from the third eyes
of oysters open on the beach. Or the mouths of books
that had lost their place in the universe, left open
gaping in the sand at the incontrovertible signposts of the stars.
So many echoes from home you can't help but lose track
of your soul sometimes along the way trying like the rain
to better the world like a green tree ring pinging
the heart wood of a petrified forest like a tuning fork
or a witching wand that might break into blossom yet
if only we don't give up like grails and constellations
looking for the watersheds of the shining whether
they're dragons that swallow the moon to bring the rain
or the bell weathers of irreversible delusions
that fill the abyss with the elixirs and love potions
of our intoxicating affair with our own laughter and tears.
Over the course of the intervening light years
the lost flight feathers of many strange skies
under our wings, lonely prayers in the moonlit tents of the doves
growing like morning glory all over the childhoods
we abandoned like buckets beside the wells we fell into
like hourglasses of quicksand leaking out of ourselves,
like stars from the perfect bodies of contiguous time and space.
We're exalted in the midst of our humiliations. We're humbled
by the excess of our celebrations. We ghost dance against
the gathering thunderclouds of preeminent war
like a guild of sacred clowns and shepherd moons
on tour in protest against the bulwarks of gravitas
enslaving third world planets, and for a time, our hearts
feel like angry strawberries glowing in the starfields
as if Aldebaran had just blue-shifted toward the spiritual life
of the Pleiades, and were young again, the red flame
of the poppy in its blood that dreams of sustaining
and renewing life, even if it be just the tender green placard
of a leaf unfolding in the ashes of our urns, one
shy tendril of morning glory seeking the light
in the terrible stillness of an implacable abyss,
we are made young again, clear again, by the gusts
of a moody, blue muse of emotional hydrogen
flaring up in us like the inspiration for goblets and fountains
of cool white flowers hanging our bells and trumpets
like music growing all over the cedar hedges in the early morning.
Can you listen with your eyes? Can you see with your ears
how the ghosts of the stars walk the earth at night
in the flesh of flowers blooming like chicory along the roadside
in the blue irises of the eyes of September, or in gardens on the moon
left untended by the gentle rains of our imaginations
for more childhoods than there are watermarks in the heartwood
of the tears it took to get here like rootless trees
spreading across the earth like an unplanned pilgrimage
of exiled immigrants returning to the ancestral shrines
of their prophetic skulls burning like prodigal stars
in the spacious windows of our visionary homes?
Realizing at last, if nothing else from our insights into life,
the star-maps of the fireflies at the headwaters of our source
aren't bounded by the hearthstones of our wandering hearts
where the vagrants lay their heads down at last
on the hard pillows of the moon rocks they brought back with them
to dream of breathing new life into the lost atmospheres
of their childhoods returning like the lyrics of the night birds
to a wheeling mobile hanging like a windfall of planets
and dancing apples from the rafters and boughs of the ceilings
that couldn't keep the lid on the toy boxes of their bedrooms
or the hoods on the marvellous third eyes of the falcons
perched on the tree limbs of their telescopes in the corner
trying to see into the dark as far as the wingspan of their light will let them.
