Lavender
By Paul Cameron Brown
A mind is a ray of light running to the sea;
an arch of wood upon which birds rest.
Minds roam the ocean's crest, sit as antlers upon a beach,
watch eddies of water trap themselves in the sand.
And minds are in anything but a state of rest - they violate
physics, make mockery of other bodies not in ready motion.
I have seen a mind enclosed above fresh air and sunshine,
frolicking on its own strength, the elasticity of its thought lassoing
all the stars assembled.
Golden points of light caught in this sand with an oval sun
marching blue legions across the sky bring more harmony than
all the stars assembled.
Admiral. Fakir. Harem. They are all here as is batik, geisha,
sarong, teak and gingham. I have seen them in quiet pools near
the atolls.
Rapture is a word to be eaten with persimmon and pears.
The closed wood. Copse and fragrant bush. White mare alone in
a green-studded pasture aback groves and groves of pleasant
trees. Bright insects making a curry of the forest floor with leaves
as trinkets bartered to the wind.
And the endless sky overturned like a bowl across the horizon.
Water and air, the two chief elements in a brisk compound with
earth and fire.
The land itself nursing a presence by the sea as a lizard might
devour a fly on a bough above a tree.
Then there are the granaries of this empire, the washed up logs
darting into footprints from the inlets. A white sand making its
presence felt like a tireless magician. Green strands of the
cucumber bush big with melon, a mother with expectant child
hushed and sitting by a clearing.
"The waters of the stream please me more than the sea,"
coconut groves with hand-me-down messages for the ages.
Strands among weeds, wine bottles as ferrymen ready for
circumnavigation around islands crisscrossing bucolic charts.
And everywhere reefs and coral and sugarbush fish darting
between the sieve of land breaking bread with sea; exchanging
colours from many coloured coats.
Kangaroo, koala, tepee, bayou hula, lei.
Sights which gallop against the senses, act as brigands to mature
reason. Faraway in the mountain fastness of the mind, alpine
meadows look out upon further marvels, exchange cocoa for
quinine, adjust the mind as a stirrup before a long, night ride.
The shaman with a hammock in his catamaran dolefully accepts
the waves as the skin must a tatoo.
The lovely collision of sound with twilight on fragrant sea-grape,
the hush of storm clouds preparing to administer their own
bromide of fire before the appearance of a band-aid patch of
lightning streaks against the divide.
Perhaps lavender is a language here, the juxtaposition of mind
with energy coming to a halt from a brisk canter, then proceeding
to nibble a currant from my hand.