1.
What can you say of the earth,
hovering so delicately
up there,
trailing your long sleeve of a magician
travelling against the gusts of wind?
2.
I have only the briefest notion of your body
which is all veins but no heart,
thinned down to this single longing
to swim against whatever drags you down.
3.
How does it look,
this earth, from where you are
started as you are on the long journey
to the point where all our world
can no longer be seen?
Everything must be a little smaller,
the actions and gestures of people
a little less meaningful
as they try to fill the long seconds you dangle
above this hillside.
4.
The cord I hold to keep you,
to keep my contact with you,
slashes wildly this way and that,
unwilling or unable
to match your graceful riding of the air.
5.
We are shrinking every minute in your gaze.
Birds are more noble
and even the treetops' curved harbours seem spiritless.
If my body was as thin as yours,
my heart spread far more widely
till it corresponded one for one
with the creatures
both above and below the skyline,
maybe then
we would find a way of talking.
6.
I imagine a race of people
who go every twilight
to consult with you,
standing along ridgelines
or the jagged edges of ocean,
patiently giving out and hauling back
the thread that joins them to your vision.
Like fishermen
who instead of killing and dragging up
attentively feed and give out
what rises so fluid above them.
Maybe mandarins in gold and purple gowns
would stand there
seeking in your sudden tugs and betrayals
the code which governs,
the artistry of the almost invisible signatures
the air scribes for its own meditation.
7.
There are so many favours I would ask of you:
patience, forgiveness,
the ability to live on air.
I don't know how to conduct myself in your presence
having long since lost the due reverence
and frivolity
of being at play with the sky.
I know I cannot ask you to cure
the intolerable heaviness of moving on this earth.
You ride at twilight above me
flashing your colours of the rainbow
in last light stillness.
Despite the metaphor of freedom
my hand won't let you go.