Kaimos

this
has not been an easy voyage,

no: at times flinty, even cruel;
at others, most brilliantly illuminated
with the immune grace of
bright moments of utmost connection:
timeless, immense, momentary, gone—

the yearning after

after unattainable things

the circling over others
the presence of an absence haunts

under unending grey skies
no sense of direction or time
going in circles, urgently—

tonight
they are dancing in the small
town under an old mountain
in the northern woods where roads
are scarce

they have been gathering to dance
there for over two hundred years

returning as though uncentered
driven pulled to return, return and dance anew—

endless timeless purgatory of
roads wound infinitely out and down
never really arriving

when will end
this endless circling

no change
no direction
just orbiting a trough of valleys
filled with bog and silted-in lake—

you go and you go and time passes
but you never get anywhere
and you're stuck behind
some other traveller determined
to much slower than necessary—

no
this
has not been an easy voyage
and the arrival always delayed departure
shouldered endurance of
durance vile

and the yearning
will it end
cycling patterns of push and release
cycling moments of still calm centers

like eyes of geodes
in the side of a blind slate hill
exposed to the light for the first time
in a million years of
sleep earning itself a forbidden dawn