52-Blue: The Loneliest Whale
“Calling out at 52 Hz, a frequency unrecognized by other whales, this mysterious creature is believed to have lived its life in solitude. It calls forever unanswered by its own kind. In our ever-present fascination with these majestic beasts, the tale of “52” has prompted an intense reaction amongst our own species, pointing to a greater awareness of human loneliness than ever before.”
“Temptation is born from every breath,”
He said, taking a drag from his cigarette,
Then he threw it on the stony ground
And turned his back on the misty town.
Overhead, the skies remained gray
Blending the hours of every day
From moments past to moments born
The dingy gray town was all he had worn
“Take your time in what you choose,
With each step you gain, but you also lose.”
He walked along the road heading north
Feeling that his life had run its course
Weeping words from rain soaked lips
Meaning, and thoughts in pieces and clips.
And as he plodded toward that gray sky
He didn’t wave or say good-bye
Tattered clothes and a pistol at his side
His words kept flowing like the endless tide
“This is the way we love when all the world has hate
And this is how we fight when we’re slaves to the state
When money has meaning and hearts can be spent
This is how we live when our souls are for rent.”
In the cold, gray mist his words rang true
Dirty, cracked fingers, bloody and blue
A shot was heard, or maybe a few
They found his body down the road from Kingsview
What would they say this day
The voices of the eyes
Bearing witness to this dance
They see the change
The attitude of this affair
They measure and mold
Their stories are told
Missing the details
The ultra violet
And infrared
Sweeping bursts of coronal mass
And spots that blemish
The face and soul
A living world
Tormented
By its own violent storms
And magnetic waves
Yet they give praise
Tormented fellow
Tugging on his mistress
Body and soul
The one who creates it all
To pull her near
Her greatest fear
To let her go
She’ll never know
Acceptance of this fate
The burden they bear
For the balance
And existence
Of all we know
Hangs on the deadly dance
Between two lovers
That will never be whole
Never as one
Without destroying the other
Glowing bright
Her dress of white
Now fades to patches of green
And the colors given
By his guiding light
The yellows and reds
Now rise from beneath
And change again in twilight
Purple and blue their sheath
And as the icy veins
Creep away
Retreat into the light of day
As her hills turn brown
Exposing their ground
For her hero
Her freeze gives way
Icy daggers
Turn to vapor
Rising in her cloudless skies
Only the light his love
Now reflects in her eyes
She returns to her lover
A renewal of their passion
Eternally the mother
He made her to be
Filling salty oceans and seas
With the tears from their struggles
Between this gravity
And the cold
Empty space
That will forever
Temper their embrace
Somehow through it all
Eons of this struggle
These concentric circles remain
She will pull away
Then return to her lover
A love like no other
Again to be reclaimed
Of life and love
Deep inside
Her heart beats hot
The essence of her being
Far beneath
The prairies and forests
And cold glacier stares
For she was created by he
To be as he longed to be
Nurturing and fair
Temper and flair
Never ending changes
With each passing day
While he remains her center
And guides her on her way
From the heavens shining lights
The many yet far between
Cold and loveless
Invisible in the night
Those that cannot be seen
Rocks tumble
Into collisions unheard
Dim and dusty surfaces
Barren and lightless worlds
Black holes spiral
Consuming all that draw too near
Collapsing under the pressure
Light
Gas
Stars
Into one mass they sear
Crushed into their essence
Pushing and pulling
Lifeless planets aimlessly adrift
In the silent void
Lacking the light of day
Once born by their sovereign one
But lucky is the living
Spun from the gravitational blessings
Of the life breathing sun
At the center of its world
The one that bears fruit
On a surface so harsh
In the oceans life thrives
And in the green lands above
Life
The living
Born only to yearn
With every passing turn
And born again
A life continues on
Slowly she made her turn
Reluctant and wavering
Turning her eyes back to him
The hope
Of a romance past
His light glints off her
Spires of diamond and sapphire
Blinding reflections
Of days long forgotten
Refracted into prisms
By the crystal ball futures told
His golden light shining
On her skin
His oasis
The belief
It can all be as it once was
A bright future
Symbiosis
In a perfect partnership
And in this moment
She draws a deep breath
Gazing upon the scattered ruins
Swept away
By the winds of his emotion
And drawn back
By her memories
The eternal tug of gravity
The power to create
The power to destroy
All that is
And all to be left behind
The faith
She holds for him
Precious to his heart
Vital to his existence
He won’t sweep them away
No
Not today
But his light will guide
Her journey through
This field of hurtling stones
Paths
Destined to collide
And where she will rest
Is for her to decide
The heavens illuminate
Brighter still
In her eyes
And she gazes upon him
Once more
And the echo rings
Her sigh
And the heat of his love
Creating the fog
An audible shroud
Where the daggers would hide
Thrusting toward his heart
Finding their prey
While his light was
Showing her the way
And she was
The uncompromising one
Taking what he could offer
The brilliance
That made her eyes shine blue
In the silver reflections
Behind the fog shone through
The voice of the valley walls
Between her hills
The rivers once again run
To babble the words
He longed to hear her breathe
I believe
For what gives him hope
His reason to shine
Faith
Her soul
The water that quenches
The dry burning heart
Beating forever on
For her
And she was…
“Don’t be my martyr!”
She hears his voice say
“Don’t turn away –
After all
It was only our gravity
That made you stay
It all boils down to chemistry
And electrons will never stray
So turn your smile back to me
Please let me light your way.”
Under the blanket of white
The Earth reclaims her right
As the feet turn to inches
Slowly before their eyes
The heat and fury
From deep below
Stretch and yaw
The fingers of the woman
Buried alive
Claw and dig and scratch
From underneath
Consuming her prison walls
High above
The hero of the day
Fights valiantly
Behind the colossus of the sky
To reach his fair maiden
Strands of golden curls
Drape the frozen towers
Her sentence
His quest
A word spoken
Like the sweetest honey
From her desirable lips
A word for his sake
A word for her hope
“Faith”
With the word
Fresh on the vibrations
Off her tongue
Echoes through the millennia
Giving rise to his heart
Buoyed from the stratosphere
Filling the salty oceans with tears
And love
And hope
And the fears of eternity
And the words spoken
From the lips of another
The fruits of his soul
And the passion once long lost
“I believe”
With those words
His taught muscles strained
Lifting this galaxy of weight
Deftly and agile
But seemingly insurmountable
Tired and weary
Crossing the light years
To drench her skin
To warm her fields
And ignite her flame
The steely silver blades
Threaten in his way
His time is short
To win his battle
To save his mistress
From the slumber of eternity
The dagger blades
Drive toward his heart
The time passes
And days go by
And still she lies
Under snowflakes that cover
Her glistening flesh
Soft and supple
Waiting for decay
Or her hero of the day
Beneath this ring of fire
In the winter freeze
Ice and snow
Shift to tiny daggers
Pointing to reach the flame
But with each passing moment
They creep farther away
August 23, 2009
Quiet evening… fresh bread, hummus and red a good cabernet… listening to good music and letting the stress of the day melt away…
So much happens every day it seems; too much to even keep track of. Hours awake grow longer, trying to pack more and more into each day… sleep lessens and the need for it wanes… those pesky wrinkles on the backs of my hands grow more defined..
I took my kids for a swim this evening, which is never good for my skin, but if I had a soul, it would be good for it. The night air is so crisp and the sky so clear. As we walked back to their house tonight my oldest son looked up at the sky and said, “Oh, there’s the big dipper!” just in time for all of us to look up at this famous constellation and catch a shooting star streaking across the night sky.
There is something magical about that.
To make that wish. To live in the shoes of a child, for just a second more.
But thoughts have pervaded in my mind all day… too many bad thoughts. Too much for me some days… too much.
Sometimes, they have to be exposed….
You wear hope like yesterday’s fashions
And the fads that come to pass
With the arrival of tomorrow
Fighting against your static possessions
And embellishing all these things that you call love
These misgivings you deem tragic
An affront to the person you see yourself as
In your fun-house mirror life
Straightening the jagged edges
That you’ve worked so hard to hide
Pearl white shoes don your feet
Resisting the mud slung up
By the dance of avoidance
On your imaginary yellow-brick road
Your path to the salvation of normalcy
And with the simplicity of a click of your heels
Everything will be alright again
But the warmth of your heart
Suffers beneath the cold of your skin
And the burning heat you claim to own
Is smoldering ashes that never touched a flame
No other shoes will fit your feet
And your rose colored glasses
Cloud your vision
Keeping you from seeing
The smoke from the disasters you leave behind
While this brass holds cold to my hand
I am aching to move away from it
To step away
To find my way
Away
But this tether
The web you spin
Seemingly from nothingness
Offering unconditional support
“It’s alright, I will catch you.”
You call from the past
“I will catch you, you’ll see.”
But a hapless fly could not see
What you offered
Suffocation
As all you ensnare
Twists in the wind
And a single flake falls back to your skin
Disguised as the ember
You pronounce as your awakening
From a fire remaining
In a winter’s slumber
Cherished as this daily ring of gold
Is replaced by a nightly handle of brass
Offering a distance
Beyond the quiet drum beats
And hypnotizing highway lights
Beyond a clear night sky
Shinning like the fake glass jewels
You hold dearer than love
And I breathe
Free me of these shackles of ice
And lift me from the crushing smoke and smolder
I can breathe
And still you cry
While I seek the lights
Until I die
January 3, 2007
The morning began like so many others recently... no sleep, an early morning ride to the airport, and a flight scheduled to take off earlier than most people will wake up on a Wednesday.
As the plane taxied down the runway, the pilot announced, “We’re 2nd in line for departure; flight attendants please take your seats.” I knew that meant a quick release by air traffic at the destination.
We passed another airline’s flight, sitting in the penalty box. A Northwest flight, most likely bound for Detroit. A much busier and less organized airport than the one I am heading to. But I’ve been there too. Twenty or thirty minutes sitting on a tarmac waiting for the flight to be released. Sometimes it’s too much traffic, sometimes it’s fog. They have my sympathy, but I’m glad it’s not my flight.
Today is going to be a whirlwind job. A flight, five-hundred miles in one direction, grab a car, drive another hour… all to do about 30 minutes worth of work. Then, turn around and make the same trip in reverse to get home for work the next morning. Sixteen hour days have become the norm. Less than four hours of sleep have become more common.
As I finish the last couple sips of a bloody mary and the flight attendants hurriedly rush by to clean up everything they’ve previously distributed to the first class passengers. I settle back into my seat, gazing out my window. The sun is just starting to illuminate the horizon; the sky is a fire red beneath high clouds to the east. The plane turns to head down the runway in the opposite direction. Now facing west, the glow of a brilliant full moon bathes the cabin in a pale light. Against what is still a night sky to the west, the moon is a magnificent sight, quietly following the airplane as would a concerned parent watching over a child.
The jets just outside the window whine as they power up, firing and coaxing the plane forward down the runway. The pilot increases the thrust, causing me to press back into my seat. I love this feeling. Not even halfway down the runway, the plane tilts back and with a gut dropping sensation I can feel the very moment the plane has ceased its contact with the ground below.
I lean and rest my head on the hard plastic wall next to me, and watch as the lights outside rapidly become the lights below. The climb is steep. Features once recognizable, within seconds become scenery resembling the tiny model houses, building, cars and trains I once played with when I was much younger.
Some days, I still wish I got to play with them.
The tall buildings of the city to the west come into view; their lights, green and red for the holidays, standing out against the empty blackness of the calm, dark lake behind them. The full moon still shining down, enveloping the landscape, creating white streaks of light on the rivers surrounding the city. As the flight moves further south, banking slightly to the left, the moon’s glow fully illuminates the once dark and invisible water of the lake. The ripples on the surface, now fully visible - the water seems to glow as bright as the moon above it. It is an amazing sight, to see the contrast and the change as the plane climbs higher above the city I know as home.
Yet another day has begun. I try to read the new airline magazine, but it cannot hold my attention. My mind is too distracted – not by the job ahead, not by what I’m leaving behind for the day… but… by other things.
My next bloody mary arrives and still I ponder. What will my life be like in five years? Will I be here for my children? Will I ever find what I’m seeking?
I take out my laptop and jot notes. I prepare a spreadsheet I will need when I arrive. The attendant comes to let me know what gate my connecting flight will depart from when I arrive at the hub.
Still, my thoughts are distracted…
Outside the sun has made its presence known. The sky further south is now a hazy blue. The mountains below now alternate light and shadows. Their peaks, orange and brown from the sun’s warming light, while their valleys are still shroud in darkness and pockets of fog. The moon shines dimly above; losing its dominance in the well lit sky as it seeks the horizon to the west.
I pour my next bloody mary and with each passing minute am closer to my first stop. I close my eyes….