the river, a sentient being,
skin of mist,
the pale mauve at sunset.
The vessel of our ancestors, the
Anasazi,
has borrowed wings and the birds all point to the
unnatural nest
where an egg glows like the
moon, or the earth, or the sun.
The water near the dock is
restless, wanting to move on,
the birds hold formation.
Is the porcelain egg a bowl to
give birth to a winged pot?
Does it dream of flying over
more peaceful waters
at an undeterminate time of
beginnings or endings?
Everything depends upon how you
read it.
A flat plane? Horizontal or
vertical?
A trinity of birds has broken
past
the imprisoned sky of the winged vessel
So many bars, the bridge, the
nest, the dock—all to confine us
The pot is full, round, fecund
as a nine-month woman,
decorated with the symbols of
life,
the Greek key, the labyrinth.
The minotaur is asleep,
the legs
of gulls like small brush strokes
against their fanned tails, are
they guarding their eggs
or are they opportunistic, about
to descend
upon an unguarded nest for a meal?
Cannibalistic creatures.
Nature is non-moral, yet we are
shocked by such notions
as if there were some
significance
buried there for us to glean from.
We are only repelled by the
notion
because the metaphor is too obvious,
too potent, this is why it
repels us.
But birds are the messengers,
they know the density of air.
Only in rare dreams do we join
them, testing our wings.
I remember finding a baby bird
on the garden path
of an obscenely decadent hotel,
the Waikaloa,
the Disneyland for adults.
An immigrant starling too young
to leave the nest
the distress calls of its
mother, real enough.
I was caught between contempt
for opportunistic non-native species
who do so much damage to our
crops,
but then it struck me that we
too, are opportunistic immigrants
plundering the nest of something
infinitely more fragile.
So many paradises succumb to
corporate taming.
We are the ones responsible,
the
ones who wander through massive hotel lobbies
in order to quench our unending thirst.
The egg is not in a nest, it is
the illusion of a nest,
circular, familiar, the egg is suspended, perhaps
rising,
or falling down the bottomless mesh tube,
a flume, a conduit churning to
the ground in arabesque formation.
We are flooding other countries
with our technology.
It clings to us like
opportunistic burrs
brushed off in a likely spot to colonize.
The ascension of the vessel into
the sky, a resurrection.
Perhaps it rose out of the tomb too early
searching for a rushed spring,
the mesh tube, the opening to
the tomb.
But it is not Christ seeking the
trinity above our heads,
the pot, by nature, is female. The ascent of She,
winged into the cacophonous air,
the crepuscular air.
The underworld is of our own
choosing.
We invented it to appease our guilt.
I read about a curious notion
that we cannot see the parallel
between the religions we were
raised in
and this is why we must read the
myths from other cultures.
We tend to think of our own
upbringing as fact, not metaphor.
Yet here it is again and again,
the metaphor
rising from the underworld
called Persephone, called
Inanna, called Demeter,
called Isis, called Astarte, called Christ.
The egg must be rising because
the pot is ascending,
free of the underworld at last,
it metamorphoses,
or did it give birth to the egg?
Completeness of evidence
and the procreative urges to
further the species at any cost.
The starlings who rob the nests
of others,
like the missionaries in Hawaii,
governments—
each with a vested interest to
further the self.
Group ego and fear of the void
that is sure to follow death and extinction.
Surely there must be more to
life
than the nest, the starling thought to itself,
before it plunged to the earth, pinfeathers still sheathed.
Surely there must be more to
living
than this death, this ceasing to be,
early people thought as they
placed flowers on the newly dead.
Surely this is a metaphor for
something else
Surely ours is the enlightened
path,
each tribe proclaiming, uttering
the first “I am”
but as each proclaimed their
identity,
they separated from the larger whole,
thus spontaneously developing
creed and dogma.
The multiple “I am’s” echoed
around the world
shattering the dawn,
self-expulsion leads to the center of things,
the feeling of either being on
the outside
seeking the center of the universe,
or making the center the place
where you stand.
You conceived it into being.
I am, therefore I am, came long before
the Cartesians.
Every revolution has its own
prison
because of the nature by which it was construed—in extremes.
Action/reaction nether being the center of things.
I am/ I am not.
Thus the maws of the void open
up
to swallow us whole before our time.
“Is”ness.
And so the birds wheel and turn
like dancers,
or do dancers mimic the birds?
And what of the snake who
listens
to the ground with its whole body?
Ear to the ground with its ribs,
listens to the dark wisdom of the earth?
Of life and death, of zygotes
and blastophores.
Hot ash bonfires, cremation, and hidden fecundity.
The pot
rises carrying its precious burden to the sky
so the air will know another
kind of kin,
seeks union with the great
unanswerable void,
and the questions that will
never be answered.
This is the way of things.
Monotones,
the black lip of despair, the
pot speaks to the air.
I resist the notion of Ariadne
but she’s there.
The mesh becomes the web, the
bridge leads to the other side,
the first egg, fallopian tubes
spider, reptile,
human, fish, all arise from the egg.
Symbol of Christ, the web,
Peter’s net,
in ova, in the egg, unprepared.
Summer 1992
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell
DV files 40-46; 48-51
were never transcribed from freewrite
DV files 47 & 52 empty. Hope I have hard copy.
