nightwave 1

As the mood elevators lift and spread
wings over the night,
rippling sounds in the sky,
a soft story creeps unnoticed into the dimly lit room.
Under the door its feathered fingers slide,
past the bolted lightning rods and
over the age-old picture frames,
my sofa lies in recline,
a fire in its place-contented,
the susurration of paper against paper:

“ In the days of tomorrow stood a tower of sandstone,
winds from the surrounding deserts brought vague messages from other lands,
merging in a babel of mixed emotions;
but here in the baked sun one was all alone,
climbing up their way on the spiral encircling staircase
no guardrails to hold their hands
no mercy but that of conviction
and the shelter of surety.
Standing atop the smooth curving brown surface
staring at the rainbow sands glittering in the thin air,
almost obscuring completely the distant ocean
thirsty but unworthy is the traveller who reaches the heights.

Sitting down, close your eyes,
reach far beneath the base,
to the underground viaducts
and causeways of life,
where Babylon's gardens grow unattended,
wild free along the lines of nature's impeccable order
water trickles through
drops in a once flooded vein
that whispers rather than pulses,
but yet serves the cause of peaceful existence.

Ask a question standing up,
ask it of the four directions,
of the eight gates,
of the sixteen hundred meandering paths lazing their way into the distance,
and your response is thrown back at you,
in shards of clay,
piecing together the archaeologists mystery,
the key to your uncertain future.

You find it hard to quench that desire to
irrigate the lands with the fertile imagination
of human hands, and lives that no one can love easily
to realign the waterways with the pouring ladle
the deep seas that will soothe the parched canals,
but you know that tranquility, and its silent partners
muses of the darkness
seductresses of your spirit
they will vanish, along with this tower,
deep into the recesses of this world
and leave you standing within the lines of brightly-lit
corridors and corporeal trappings.
To face shadows shared by all.

Civilization now stands against the force of the individual.”