return

i return
here by the pacific
i am still amazed
at the immensity of the fog
moisture air-born
everywhere
you can't leave really
nor get away from mortality
nor the time of your birth
nor the earth's oceans
navigation is still an art
even after all these years 

since the earliest ships
set sail for the unknown
in the bay so often
the line between
the water's surface and the sky
is intermingled
limitless and liquid
going everywhere
in your lungs
in your blood
in your imagination
an imagination not so different
from those who say
each pink sky since fukushima
is really a cesium 137 sky
just like those double
and triple
and circular rainbows
are daughters
of a radioactive atmosphere
imagination and fantasy
are not the same thing
cesium
moves fast
fast enough to prove relativity
and if you had a bowl of it
in your hands
now
on a very warm night
perhaps in the southern hemisphere
it would be liquid
pale shimmering gold
the speed of light
is what is most constant
but even it fluctuates
the truth of this moment
can never be apprehended by averages
nor by the rules extrapolated from the same
though we can project
an approximate facsimile
of a tree
based on the measurement of all trees
it will not be the tree
that rustles outside my bedroom window
nor would such a bird
be the bird that sang with my heart last november
last night i dreamed
i was a winged mermaid
(this was the solution
to a problem i had solved
before i knew what the problem was)
your imagination may be behind
or ahead of reality
but its never far
ahead or behind
the same is true for everyone who says
something is ending
and those who say
something is beginning

--Lorena Wolfman © 2014