Pondering Cantos

One - Ghost Box

When I was a child of four
there were ghosts in a box
in the corner of my room;
deep pigment red top painted
over whitewashed white pine,
crisp as Christmas morning.

Shut tight as a warm window
on a cold night; the ghosts there
trod and pondered my dreams,
amid moonshadow, and the sough
of breeze through seasonal trees.

I dreamt of a great tree then;
winged children, and some,
grown into distant adults-
and an old man, who spoke to animals
that came and went, and sometimes just sat.

When I knew I could fly
I would; step, step, leap up
to the top of some familliar structure,
sensing the world as the woven texture
of a stormy spring green day…

And leap, again up, to the sky
and up the spiral stair of air
to where clouds met mountains,
heaving with and into this ocean of wind
thick enough to grip and slide through.

Far, and long, and surely lost-
bright sun on clouds;
mountains lit, enshrouded in mist,
alive within their fierce beauty,
mere steps ahead across air.

I chose to turn, not back
but aside, and flew not to
but along the front of living thought;
and saw faces as pieces of memory
time-etched into the mighty spine.

Then, down to moors and sunken hills,
to scrub and scree and beach,
then tideline; the border of the shore
came and was and went,
and the sea took me into her country.

And I heard a voice somewhere;
the old man, some animal, or a star;
laughing, cajoling, wondering
something beyond my simple ken;
drawing me like a sketch toward…

The ghosts murmering and clambering
amongst the blocks and viscera quieted
as I spoke; mom; talisman of
identity to all who know one, and
gave up my struggle against waking.