Thursday, August 5, 2004

TERMINAL VELOCITY   They would ask, should I return, to give them names for all the things I saw.   Even as I fed back voltage, trickle chemistry past their electrodes; even as I shared   my heartbeat with their monitors, my blood with their microscopes, they would question in quiet voices,   seeking out new nouns with which to corner the ineffable, new  verbs to charge the immaterial.   Even as now their aerial voices - filtered through ionosphere, the shingle-clouds of asteroids, across these tideless oceans -   whisper insubstantial, needle-thin, scratching their need to know the unknowable onto the mighty silence. I trail interrogation   like a shower of sparks. But from this eminence I no longer heed the eyes that scrutinize, lidless, unswerving. This dark accomodates   a billion eyes, speculating my parabola by day, by night, probing for my tiny skidding light.  Implacable, incurious, I navigate the brilliant wastes ñ   long black sargassos drifting, planet wrack and flotsam, dereliction. And beyond, always beyond, the bright flying splinters of the stars.   10:59:14 PM    Mmm? []

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