#1294 - our work is to imagine them

 

1294

18.vii.23

4.200

our work is to imagine them

after reading Maggie Ball’s Bobish

 

 

our work is to imagine them

which is how we come to be here

 

come by which of which to where?

 

these days we just get on a plane

an inconceivable distance

 

have out the charts

wrecks dot

 

bird gone to its song

those stars hung in the branches

still more than all the prayers there were

 

one sees through a tune to the words

none for the sun in leaf deeps

 

we have to imagine them

a thin trail all the way back

 

they’re being picked off all along

and still, I have so many ancestors!

 

it’s no wonder people see ghosts

 

I’m a kind of an endnote myself

 

the titles are scrolling down

you keep expecting the swell and fade

but every day we are more

 

and here I am, writing for your margins

 

we are pushing past all that has been

so did they

flit and what for?

 

hate does the trick –

pitchforks and fire

 

it is secret to be open to

a sky like that

though many disguised themselves away

 

until we were left with the work of imagining

 

here they come again

do the battlements

give obscure instruction

 

gone to the time sickness, they are

 

so many came to catch a star

 

their real as real as ever ours

 

and neither here

nor are we there

 

but every one and thing

ever lived

yet with us here today

 

singing to the dark itself

is where we will have gone

 

in every word an echo

 

if you can’t believe

just leave

 

now there

what have I said?