Follow
You. I see you sitting in a box.
I see you from far away
Sitting there stolid and sucking
On a sour cigar of disappointment.
You are so far away
I think more about you than
About the near meadows
Where flowers never fade.
Look this way and see
That you don’t want what you wanted:
You don’t want that grand piano
And a week’s vacation from worry
Or the comfort of cushioned old age
And that memorable funeral.
Leave your artificial garden of delights
And follow the footsteps in the clouds
That are stepping-stones to serenity;
Climb out of that dish of butter
And wash yourself clean as rain.
All those gains
All those successes
All those conquests
Are as naught in the electric
Ever-changing coloured globes
Of your newly-opened eyes —
What you see reflected on the surface
Of a radiant bubble is you;
What made you blind to that
Part of your mind and soul?
Some echo of childhood sounds
When you swoop as a gull
As you blow in wisps through leaves;
And you wonder why you didn’t before.
Withering plant, recover your roots:
Burst forth as a bloom
Froth on moonlit beaches
Run wild over plains stretching
Vast and ever vague and new;
Shuck off those bonds and bills
Wedding invitations and fears;
Experience the storm that rages
Within the breast that needs protection
Only from itself. Follow those footsteps
And become that which you see
That which you wish to be
That which you envy.
