Upon Kingfisher Wings - Letter One From Minimus Cast Out Into Space Praying Net Or Nest Catches Poem by Warren Falcon

.
'The kingfishers! who cares for their feathers now? ' - Charles Olson


1

I, Minimus, launch forth regardless.

I have right to dare my feeble casting
forth, and off, of fetters, the jellies of
sin, and sally, well, if not sally, to jostle
the crowd in the bus station to purchase
my escape to spacious...what? Space,
I guess, to dream outside of who I am or
of what I have become and can see in-
ex-or-ably, ably, I hope, written in stars
or just desserts, just well-dressed guesses
derived from stormy Herald's blurting,
O winking paradisio, distant still,

'To become men and not destroyers of the world'**

I take my Pound with, old cantor,
no longer cantering but for us both
I now swagger, not to stake a grand
claim in turning the race, the species
other than to what it always was, ever
will be, grandiose, verbose, polyglottal
babblers rebutting halitose Death,
how big is the universe,
how we are all so small
sings it well,

'The ant's a centaur in his own dragon world.'

2

I live in presumptions of other life
that I will eventually live or be living
aware that I live presently as if this
being-lived life now is provisional,
that I shall one day be traveling or
well-traveled, living in some other land,
culture, having planted Odysseus's
oar there, fluent in tongue and lovers
of said land or if now said then perhaps
I may sing and say, bring new ships
into the leaner bay loaded with exotica
to otherwise, o land-locked, Reason,

'to begin with a swelled head and end with swelled feet.'

3

That one day the book shall be written,
Odysseus come smiling through the door.
That I shall live forevermore free of provisions,
be delivered presently into good, rich life
and unto the richer world, my Lover, so long
turning turning turning in distance away from,
yet I manage a caress, a smooch which
neither dismisses nor fully embraces and
it is I that is and shall be erased into this Love
which shall then in time be erased as well
in the greater Sun and that Shining, too, shall
be erased. Then we shall all be scattered,
or I shall be only, embrace by embrace,
toward erasure no longer effortful.

I soft sift draft by draft rough toward world
now slowing in spite of parentheses these
provisional postulations of 'the good life'
to come. Eventually. There is only this
that I am living now. And my hands feel,
even perhaps are, strapped to this wheel
that turns me as turns Beloved Earth,
the Sun, too, each dreaming
near to but apart from each.

My reach is
here on my tongue,
in my fingers here
grasping words from mind.
I am ever behind in this chase,
now am further from Love,
space, than ever
though my heart
is swollen from
wanting It.

Still, world, accept my blessing.

I send this message aloft on kingfisher wings.

[All quotations in closed quotes are of Ezra Pound]