Зимородок

To blossom into being

A new world needs travelers.

Now we are here,

Calling out to each other:

“Look!”, “Did you hear that?”,

“This feels just like…”

“Watch out!”, “Where does this…”,

“Well done!” “What if?”

Now we are here,

Exploring with all our senses:

Humor, awe, dread, irony, appreciation, wonder.

When we gaze up

Celestial bodies

Flare into existence,

Dance with each other.

Flocks wing across the sky,

Swarms billow over bogs,

The air comes alive

With singing, buzzing, courting, hunting, pollinating.

Each step we take tells us

What is underneath our feet:

Grass, ice, rock,

A swaying bridge above the mist

That rises from the chasm

To cling to our ankles.

I do not know how far

We are destined to travel.

But I trust this world

To keep unfolding space and time

For our journey of exploration,

For as long as we are here.

4. Siren song

…you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them.

Homer (translated by Samuel Butler)

Sirens have two kinds of songs

To lure those who come near them,

To bind the minds of travelers

With snares of longing.

Songs of adventure and of glory,

Of giving names

To new lands, to new creatures.

These songs promise freedom

From the tedium

Of familiar words,

From the confines

Of the cradle, the field, the hearth,

From the gray stones of the graveyard,

From the moss that steals over the names

Of a long line of ancestors.

Songs of warmth,

Of embracing arms and sheltering walls.

These songs promise to turn

The terrors, the regrets

Of past voyages,

The uncharted vastness of the future

Into words, into lusty tales

That can be traded

For a hearty tankard of ale

A seat close to the fireplace,

The eager gaze of a rapt listener.

5. Nightmares and their riders

I have nightmares now.

I dream that something happened to you…

Anastasya Shepherd

A nightmare is a kind of horse:

A powerful creature, wild and willful.

Approach her with respect, with skill,

For she may bite, kick or rear;

She may leave the one who dares to touch her

Broken, paralyzed, dead.

Yet she is capable of learning to accept a rider.

Balancing on the back of a nightmare,

Riding a dark dream,

We can leap much farther than is humanly possible.

A nightmare can carry us across an abyss.

6. Trains and their dreamers

The train stitches together images,

like a demented alliterating seamstress…

Anastasya Shepherd

The distant clatter

Of the predawn train

Quilts the quiet air,

Pulls the thread of the whistle

Long, long, l-o-ong

Through the mist.

Between sleeping and waking

I dream.

I piece together

Stations, timetables, tickets

To choose my own destination,

To fashion a different self.

7. Synaesthesia

There are times in life when synaesthesia becomes inescapable,

when water smells like lead and feels blue…

Anastasya Shepherd

Escape is possible.

Search the floor of your perception,

Feel for the hidden trapdoor,

The moment of synaesthesia.

Pry it open,

Heave it up on its rusty hinges.

Plunge into the blue.

Roll up, solid, dull,

Like a ball of lead.

Sink through the water,

Pass through the gradations

Of the shimmering light

Deepening into darkness,

As the shadows thicken.

Let go of all

That has been visible.

Feel the weight of the ocean

Press you to the bottom.

Smell your own fear.

Taste the bile of loss.

Rise, rise like an air bubble.

Push through the cool resistance

Until you are released,

Until you burst into nothingness.

Let the freedom of empty space

Flood your senses with joy.

8. The Age of Discovery

You make choices.

Those choices make you.

Then you make choices.

Always a spiral – upwards or downwards – it's your choice.

Anastasya Shepherd

Having circumnavigated our world,

I realize that it is not a sphere,

But a spiral.

I am back where I started from.

The path ahead is as unknown

As it was before the journey.

But you, my friend,

Who steadfastly stayed here

At the origin,

How did you find out?

Or was it clear?

Was it clear all along?

Theological Questions

Circling the pulsing center of their universe

The fish are passing through sunlight and shadow.

Their existence is framed, circumscribed, and protected

By the carved marble rim of the fountain’s basin.

Do they fear or worship the hand that feeds them,

Removes their dead, repairs the stonework;

The hand that brought their ancestors here

From another world in a wooden bucket?

Can they see that the hand moves more slowly now,

That the bony fingers have grown stiff with age?

Portrait of a room

Now, as a human life in this room

Is ebbing,