vanishing point

it’s because when I was small

I used to pretend that I could

pluck the sun from the sky

and hold it inside my first

it would be warm and juicy

between my fingers

it would secrete lemon-yellow syrups

like a tiny hydrogen gumdrop

when I held the sun up to my ear

it would pulsate and roar with unending energy

making promises it could never keep

*

it’s because I used to hear whispers

in the empty hall

and catch shadows glancing off the draperies

the more I watched and the more I listened

the more I hoped to procure a genuine glimpse

of something that dwells

within the blind-spot of our knowledge

if I were to reach out

with all my senses

might someone

or something

reach back…

but after a certain age

the soft voices cease

and the air no longer stirs

its ineffable magic

*

it’s because when I stared into

vintage photographs

or historical paintings

some part of me mourned

for the lost hours

for the youth that had so momentarily shined

and the bright futures that were already extinct

betwixt oil and canvas and Kodak contact paper

a century is equal to an instant

if only I could somehow reveal to the

stoic Elizabethan ladies or the undaunted suffragettes

that their exquisiteness had survived them

that their distant day still resonates

within the atriums of my vision

*

it’s because once I became despondent

and uninspired

I realised that no matter how broken

one may be

life can break you a little more

and the only person

you may expect to meet inside this strange abyss

is yourself

upon the white-hot pitch of self-despair

you wait and wish

and remember

though only by letting go

of what led you there

can you find the courage to arise

*

it’s because when I consider the vastness

of the universe

and the endless expanse of time

I am suffocated by the brevity

of my own existence

I marvel at how cognition is able

to collect and conserve so many splendours

that seem immeasurable onto themselves

so I ask nature:

“what is to become of my dreams:

my 15th century order of female Jedi,

the dim, metaphysical Oz conjured

by Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata in F minor

or the vacant recesses that lay beyond Friedrich’s

einsame baum

where will these unique and precious wonders go

once my encephalon has expired”?

*

and it’s because nature replies:

“you already know the answer to these questions

you always have

try to recall the oblivion

from before you were born

it seems unreal, unfathomable

and yet ‘you’ were there for eons…

try to recall a warm darkness

try to recall a perfect sleep

absolving you and all that you ever are

try to recall not being able to recall

anything

or anyone

an equanimity as superb as a charm quark

and as boundless as two-hundred billion galaxies…”