The memory and the dream are one and the same
a phantom limb that I would break my own dear heart
to have back, restored to me
It’s as if I can see my own sight fading
while the quotidian seeps, heavy
into the fibres of my being
I am overwhelmed by the here and now, wishing
instead to be whisked away to there, to then
Four years beached on my own shore
I wonder if I was ever really made for land;
maybe I’m amphibious
never fully here nor there
I always felt horizons to be plural
and I longed to see them all
each one with its promise of a rising sun
as long as the earth shall turn
I’ll change the world and myself in the process
– or was it the other way around?
Tell me I’m not turning back on this, I can’t
tell me the memory and the dream still live
on and on and on and on
when I have died to my self
to be born anew with you
when I, too, am plural and those horizons
steady themselves, settle in a single straight line
then shall I walk firm
then shall I aim true
This poem is a companion piece (or prelude) to my post Nomad no more.
Header image: Simon Matzinger.
