Sail My Raft into the Final Silence
--
[For Thor Heyerdahl, who would have been 100 yesterday, but didn’t need to.]
I’ll quit
my armchair safaris,
stab
my swiss knives into adventure without danger
and go-
sail my raft,
blitz into that final silence, through the storm, drift,
into that final silence,
but first, of course, swim,
through a whirlwind of adventure,
utterly mad.
Let’s count on not knowing what we’re not supposed to do.
Put a little fantasy in science, shall we?
Let’s set fire to these sombre balls
with our declarations
and like Cussler, cameo ourselves at the scene
like the other Clive, Barker, with Barbarossa
and the dexterity of blind faith, as we
cRaSh
in, in this raft, any craft.
I’ll do it all,
I’ll prove people once sailed paper boats, even if they couldn’t.
Paper for Heyerdahl’s reeds,
glorious papier maché folly on the Pacific
with only the pitch of fiery words for glue,
only desperation and belief for food.
Accidentally doing the never before done,
let my exploits string a necklace of rafts in my wake
so my children can walk, like Peter,
flat Pangaeas I’ve made of expeditionary beads.
We seek reeds, and space,
space to unfurl our sails, these mindmaps;
scenes to electrify these dreams;
and balsa, on doubters, to ground us on terra infirma,
walking on water-
not knowing much we’re not supposed to do
and so doing it all.
There’ll be silence on my handmade raft in the end
decrepit by choice from living, not sitting,
even if a shriveled, leathery and smiling lump,
sailing in in that final silence,
I’ll certainly die empty, still grinning.
©Tolu Oloruntoba
7.06 pm, October 7, 2014
