Octopus Riddle

Planetary Flight


Born in an eagle's eyrie -
Sing, birds – sing.
Dying in the crush of poetry -
Ring, words – ring.

Looking glass in hand, he peers
Into the beating heart
While the idle brain just leers
At love's deleting art.

For what image of identity
Can survive love embraced,
Or look into infinity
And not be effaced?

Let us cheer with cups of light:
Raise high the crystal goblet
As if we could invite
The master of this planet.

“Lay off the humans” you fates
Astride Time's biological bases.
“What are these substrates
That animate our faces?”

He would not be happy or sad
But like a ship with heavy keel
He splits the waves like an ironclad.
Only then does he think and feel.

From the basis of alert experience,
I see outlines, edges and splotches
Of color, each with its difference.
Then brain makes its own blotches!

If the sun were a crystal ball
Which you scry through a little hole,
Set would seem the fates of all,
So let it roll, let Sun roll, roll.

He'll find his chance therein,
Not Fettered to some remote planet.
He'll whirl with the great welkin
And dizzily scan it.

And he sees all the white dwarfs
As radiant diamonds in the sky.
And he sees all the brown dwarfs
Waiting for a chance to try.

Galactic explosions and colored stars
How I wonder what you are.
Logic dictates a trip to Mars
Should you become a star.



By JPM Aug. 2011