Go On

It could go on forever from here,
For all I know.
There’s no end that I can see.
Spotless clouds multiply
Beyond finite finality,
Dropping oily shadows
On the saltwater bay,
Shimmying down and over
The misty grey-green hills
That turn back sailors
And wall off my horizon.
They could go on forever.

From somewhere an ancient tune
Conjures a dance in campfire light.
A glance reveals an elderly man
With a wooden flute, tapping a foot
To music he pries from the flesh of a tree.
This is so irregular I could deny it,
But I hear the music, I see the musician
Here and now on the settling wake
Of the second millennium,
Calling back Celtic glory
To make him whole today.
He could go on forever.

To my left in elm shadows,
A dear old girl of dear old heart
Faces a like companion,
Stretching her arms in gestures
That expand the meaning of her words.
She draws her listener along.
They collude in her retrospection,
In her experiences better shared.
So how can I see them to my left
When they’ve been uprooted
From this now,
To walk in time already past
That could go on forever?

And on this stone I rest,
In answer to a craftsman’s hope,
Songwriters dreaming in my brain.
Here I live among the crickets
Cheering invisibly all around.
I am with the pigeons scavenging
In simple grace to feed their blood.
I am among the lazy pines basking
In the white light of the sun
And among the golden hawks
Bathing their backs in shifting clouds.
I drift along with the quivering sea,
Brandishing its blue in rejection of all else.
I am one with the paver’s bricks
And with the dry leaves that skim their tops
And the minuscule ants that forage between,
And I could go on forever.