{image: found here, artist unknown}
What I want
…………–right now–
What I want
is for everyone to hold their breath
for 40 seconds.
Everyone.
The whole blue insufferable world.
Just do this for me.
Just take your deep breath.
Just hold it in.
…………….Just …hush.
And while you’re hushed,
listen.
Not to me.
6,000 years of recorded human history
and I’ve been alive for 34.
What do I know?
No, don’t listen to me, listen…
listen to everything.
Listen at doors.
At keyholes.
Listen at the spines of books.
Tilt your head and listen at the sky.
Lie with your ear to the grass and listen at the skin of the planet.
Listen at your grandmother’s skirts,
at shredded interstate tires,
at bus stop benches painted green,
and at open windows on summer nights,
like Mick Kelly in rags in the oleander shadows
waiting for Beethoven.
Listen at faces.
Listen at hands.
Listen at shoes that barely lace up anymore. Preferably ones held together with twine.
Listen at oceans,
and at the trunks of trees.
Listen at mountainbacks and at gutters,
at elephant footprints,
at business cards,
at empty lots frothed with weeds.
40 seconds, world.
Count them out in bloodtime.
Feel their measure in aortic downbeats.
…….(lubDUB)
………….(lubDUB)
Let them slow (s l o w) inside you.
Let them languor and stretch their length before you until
you can hear the breathing of time,
until you see the hills and valleys of its understanding,
until 40 seconds are a lifetime
or a lifetime of lifetimes
hung between planets like tatter-rich flags of prayer.
Until you yourself are stretched.
Until you become long;
your body
broken and formed,
bent like a bow,
strung with ache and sorrow and loss,
made strong by lunatic joy anydamnway.
Until you are fit for the launching of an arrow
through swamps of dark
at a shapeless target.
>>
Copyright © 2012 Shawnacy Kiker
it’s taking me well more than 40 seconds to take this all in, to feel the arrow.
incredible, like always. this is really, really great.
loving you.
WOW! I love it: the listening to everything! “hung between planets like tatter-rich flags of prayer”.
You are so brilliantly talented, kiddo!
Woosh! Felt this one take off in my heart and circle my head a few times before soaring off into the sky. This wisdom you share has nothing to do with age, or lack of years – you are tuned in to the Universe, you ride the comet’s tail, while we watch in wonder as it passes in front of our eyes.
As an aside, I would like you to know, I have seen elephant footprints in the soft sand of a riverbed, each one is as individual as a fingerprint – I was lucky enough to see the elephants that made them too. I listened to that day. It was a day of my life, never to be repeated.
kerry… that is so amazing. such a day. such a thing to be gathered.
i love the picture i have now of you there, listening at elephants.
… i want to go listen on your continent. it has better stories to tell.
I had to com back for another read. Wow. Plus wow, Kerry, seeing elephants footprints. Sigh. Yes, Africa has better stories!
Come back, that is……
I WILL listen tomorrow… promise. And hopefully each and every day after…
why am I tearing up because someone else notices shredded tires? Let me be fit like the arrow, because I’m already accustomed to the darkness one must shoot through. Let me know that lunatic joy anydamnway. Oh girl, your words never waver away from my heartstrings. keep playing our songs.
Amazingly beautiful…..made me listen…..