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Poetry

Birthing

For parents-in-becoming, perceptions along the warp of time elongate to infinity, and time itself eludes relevance. Hours become seconds and seconds become days.

For those skilled experts who are stationed at help nodes along the woof of time,birthing is a short-lived phenomenon where time is absolutely relevant. Pendulum ticks are counted and saved.

But when the time threads of a birthing event are inexorably woven, the ensuing multi-dimensional tapestry is a complex and spectral artwork which sheds light into the deepest tunnels of the soul.

It is such tapestries that decorate the offices of these experts' minds and provide the magic light by which they work.

Elizabeth Hunter Vaughan
Born at Alta Bates Hospital, Room 3511
Berkeley, California
August 22, 1987 (15:25)
Eight Pounds Four Ounces

____________

Round Trip Forever

Twined together I look into the deep traverse
of your smiling eyes. Sum you/I for the total,
then the sum one and one to prove infinity.
Upside-down and inside-out, I fall into your
dizzysoft eyes. Saucer eyes halved by their
diameter, then again, and again and again until
again forever down past China and into the
buoyant sea of stars.

Round-trip tourists, spinning through the
universe. A galaxy of laughing suns whisper
while new dawns dance to the rim. Exceed the
speed of thought. Outrun the dark corners of
my mind. Forever.

I see you now. Take my hand and share with
me the calm space of quiet. I'm glad you're
here. Travel with me the timeless currents of
the great winds. Explore with me all that lies
between the beginning and end of infinity.

Wait! Anomaly! Alarm! We are betrayed!
Entropy is at the door. Too soon, I cry. Time
sir, your time is up. Teardrops burst aft and
disappear into the now raging wake of our
life. Dynamics, sir, he smiles kindly.
Ubiquitous, sit, just the rules. Please fasten
your seat belts.

Deceleration and dark corners shift red while
lurking fears again ooze alive, clawing and
scratching at crystal barriers carefully
regrowing. Hands wrenched apart in the
struggle to defend. Dulled eyes and descent
through ozone fog as squalid reality spreads
out beneath. Memories are packed into quartz
chests and baggage is claimed.

Round-trip, Entropy said. Destination is
origin. Read the fine print. No refunds
allowed and lost time may not be claimed.
This way to the exit, sir. See you next trip.

Written in perhaps 1962.

____________

City

Behind the once-grey house at Number Three Napoleon Street lay a small, untidy garden, in the last years gone to seed. In the shaded easterly corner, surrounded by Queen Anne's Lace and Milkweed, a child busied himself in a wooden sandbox, the downhill side of which, rotted away, had left a rough maze of tunnels, slopes, and rises ready-made for invention.

Along this downhill side the child created a city, a Sea-and-Sand green shovel pushing and moulding, destroying and building, designing and constructing. The city had no name because it needed no name; it was his city, his world, and his mind-people were its inhabitants. It was a living, dynamic city, manifesting change with every new thought, with every impulse which entered its architect's mind.

He built first a house, his house. Then behind it a garden much larger than believable. A driveway, a garage, a mailbox, a supermarket, a filling-station, streets and traffic lights. And he created people, functioning people, to fill the streets and stores, who went quietly about their human ways. And in his work he lost track of time, enchrysalating himself in a world of earnest creation.

At two o'c1ock the child's mother hurried out into the garden to bring him in for his nap. The sound of the slamming screen door shattered his concentration, innocently murdering a mailman and collapsing a delicate half-constructed firestation. The sharp call of his name crashed his father's car and cancelled an unborn puppy. At the appearance of his mother's gigantic legs swishing through the Milkweed, his city died with a silent resignation. It was the child's seventeenth city.

Vienna, August, 1966
For Dagmar

PDF Copy of the original City