Poems At Port Trakl Part Two Poem by Daniel Brick

A JUNGLE HIKE
I can smell the ocean's salt air
even as I wander deep into the jungle.
Awkwardly pushing through thickets,
tripping over over undergrowth,
my sea legs are no help, I'm making
slow progress in pursuit of nothing.
My eyes devour the jungle colors, my ears
revel in hundreds of birds, visible and invisible,
their trilling, soaring, cascading songs.
This abundance - why am I not dazzled?
On the ocean voyage, colors drain out of
waves and clouds, ocean and sky merge
into the same featureless gray. And yet...
And yet that dark expanse is my deepest self.
I am turned inside out: it is my interior being
who wanders over the mountainous expanse of waters.
Deep within me, a true voice calls out, 'Oh, Ocean,
return me to your stark beauty, fill me with
your vast patience, pull me into your endless rhythm.'

AFTER ANOTHER BINGE
It is eight hours later, and I am
cold sober. I feel a chill
over my whole body, but my brain burns
as usual... I am stalling,
in my tiny room, in this cheap hotel,
close to my beloved ocean. Oh, mighty surf!
Oh, majestic waves, unfolding the scroll
of eternity across the planet. When will I
finally merge within your rhythms, become
one with your purposeless eternity, your
endless repetition of the same hymn?
Is it not time to collect all these fragments,
and read my Fate in their broken eloquence?

WINGS AND WAVES
There are birds, and there is the ocean.
In their constant movement, they mirror
each other. Wings or waves, flight or flow,
it is one vast reality into which I have been
thrust. At home, neither in the air,
nor in the waters, I long to be regaled
with both, Oh, the freedom of flight
through open air! Oh, the headlong motion
of ocean currents cutting across free waters!
Not for long will I be a prisoner on land:
I have signed on a steamer leaving in six days.
Already within me I am waving Port Trakl
a long farewell: 'Good bye, my third self,
nights in drunkenness, days in stupor. I leave
all the wines of the world behind.' To see birds
overhead, to feel ocean currents below, that is
enough. It is my soul's homecoming, for sure.