The Elliptical Path 
 

At the heart of this crossworld,
where the shadow meets the substance,
an armchair philosopher is seated in his smoky den,
embraced in the arms of a fossilised green throne,
worn to the bones by endless musings.

He is tired and wishes to sleep
the heavy hibernation of mountains,
but he will not rest because he believes
that lethargy is a crime against the universe.
Instead he gnaws at time with blunted teeth,
wondering, "If we think in fragments
do we die in fragments too?"
and worrying, "How will I ever
repay all this borrowed time,
which amplifies as the days progress?"

He is a desert, gathering hourglass sands,
weighing possibilities with gnarled hands,
waiting to see his prophecies echoed by reality.
Tattooed with lines, riddled with runes,
his brow is a tablet of intrinsic meaning,
onto which he has carved his own set of commandments,
above all, "Thou shalt not leave a stone unturned".
Why has yesterday followed him everywhere,
haunting him with the echoes of its plaintive whimpers?
After he is gone his unspoken questions will remain unheard.

He craves to set foot into the inaccessible
parallel realms of what might have been,
neighbouring kingdoms, glistening empires of the potential,
but concludes that time is a standing lake, eternally present,
carried on the tone of an Empyrean bell.
With a weary sigh he accepts that the transient nature of life
is a worthy sacrifice to make for its microcosmic beauty,
that life is a near-death experience.

We are all time travellers, nomads in a perpetual solar journey,
and when our brief existence has come full circle
we rejoin the earth, in which we dwell as fossils,
worn to the bones by endless musings.
 
 

(C) Copyright 1998
Nick Kellaway 
All Rights Reserved