Voyager parable
Today I am downhearted meaning sunken meaning mired
Come and be with me in the places just vacated by the predators
First stillness then the rustle of applause
For the incandescent light of survival
For the mighty who hunger but do not dwell
For the timid in their stillness
Even sound waves are a kind of migration
How somewhere out there so deep in the sky we can’t find it
Something is singing a song full of static ecstatic with our survival
Somewhere closer by a cicada is crawling out of itself
It will grow wings and it will die
On the record a tree covered in snow
Even trees begin their lives as a journey
First a fall and then a breaking
On the record violence implied by an ancient wall
On the record my childhood lighthouse
Not one shipwreck weapon predator not one war
If the record migrates in only one direction
We are frail craft we are small fry born into mystery
We sleep in our skin waiting to be woken with touch
On the record a baby cries and someone sings
And the record flies on
And the crickets go on chirping
And nothing ever dies
Parable of the little ghost
& some cultures believe in their ghosts
& the moon is the broken child cast out
& it’s this planetary ghost small pale dead thing
& we regard and disregard and blame the moon
& I believe in my ghosts
& they appear to me not as visions but right here as the living
& some of them I love and some want to kill me
& killing is wrong
& some southern fields grow crops of lead balls
& the water turns to wine and wine turns to blood
& the fields take it back to water and the plants make it into mist
& mist is the ghost of water
& it looks like the ghost of soldiers
& god believes in ghosts it says so right there in the text
& our eyes can never combine red and green some colors are beyond us
& so we have Christmas and the blood-soaked fields
& the people believe in god but not in ghosts
& religion is complicated
& sometimes the text says ghost but means wind means maybe life
& sometimes the text is red
& red means to be spoken by a man
& sometimes the text says ghost but means helper
& the exclamation mark may indicate astonishment or surprise
& perhaps it is rooted in joy
& a dead language
& it looks to me like a lamp casting light
& ghosts were in the text from the start but joy was added after
& we do not talk about ghosts or how our eyes divide color
& in one version there are 275 moments of added joy
& that is a lot of joy
& still it illuminates nothing
