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In a room full of collage and music hung a painting.
Pale smoke, the lemon of winter night, the arctic blue
in the light of snow. Deep orange, burnt into slim oblong,
a tree on fire. Indigo the eyes of a cormorant seen
in Madras.
Beneath, or somehow below the shadows of trees, I caught
a glimpse of horizons burning.
And beyond the horizons burning I caught a chill breathing
full and slow. I could feel the mist pour from the mouth
of a polar bear as she made ready to plunge into an
ocean.
In the harbour at the side of the painting, where the
pale lemon light shone, I saw a woman. She was carrying
a fishing net filled with tangerines and mackerel which
she threw into the sky.
And I saw the sunrise.
Beside her a man, playing an ocarina, was sitting under
a baobab tree. It was filled with monkeys and bears
and hula hoops and stars and black apes and singing
african elephants. And hot snakes bellied across the
sand.
Oh it was a marvel! Green and grey and lemon and burnt
orange mangroves fell from his music. And the woman
danced as the sun rose and the man laughed and it was
good.
And all the instruments of sound born from stones flew
towards them, circling like great fruit bats. And I
woke with a grain of sand in my palm.
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