A Luminous Halo

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." --Virginia Woolf

My Photo
Name:
Location: Springfield, Massachusetts, United States

Smith ’69, Purdue ’75. Anarchist; agnostic. Writer. Steward of the Pascal Emory house, an 1871 Second-Empire Victorian; of Sylvie, a 1974 Mercedes-Benz 450SL; and of Taz, a purebred Cockador who sets the standard for her breed. Happy enough for the present in Massachusetts, but always looking East.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Ode on a Whale

Edward Dulac


Ode on a Whale

I must be a mermaid, if I can swim with whales, and breathe,
Roll with a leviathan fearlessly,
Dive so deep,
Understand the language that the dolphins speak.

I must be a siren, if my song can lure a Nereid denizen,
Inspire plangent echoes in the wandering baleen,
Swell the sea,
Draw the sleeping monsters of the deep to me.

Out here no bird can fly.
Out here no land's in sight.
Only water meeting sky,
Unblinking vast horizon, view from God's own eye.

That wave you say you ride?
Waxing orgasmic over every crest?
Furious forces crashing into foam
Lifting you with every tug of tide,
Flinging you limp onto the sand?
That wave is something I have known.

Known, and gone beyond.
Left on that shore.
Now,
Miles out and fathoms deep
With whales I plunge and float, skyhop and breach,
Recovering ancient mysteries
Flowing in my veins
Older than Adam, spiraling
Backward through unmeasured time, prizing
Secrets locked in the chambered nautilus.

Coral, pearl, and ambergris my treasure is,
Buried in murky caskets unsealed by a kiss.
Protean mistress prenticed to a watery lord I am.
Nightly, my metamorphosis.

I linger in the chambers of the sea
Till divine voices wake me, and I dream.

Labels:

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very cool poem.

I'm curious where the illustration came from.

4:18 PM  
Blogger Cicily Corbett said...

It's Edmund Dulac...illustration for The Little Mermaid.

5:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks. I'll look him up, then write something for blog-city that implies he and I have been long acquainted.

7:56 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home