Abram Ring
NEW SUN
I found myself within myself
boxed up in utter darkness.
I found that I did not know
who stood next to me.
I assumed somehow that
they were a part of me,
But in the darkness there was
no place to look but inside,
And I found one quivering
fool with no company
Shivering in the cold far
from all heat and light.
I knew myself at my lowest
point,
Farthest from my destination
searching--
Not knowing what I searched for,
I could not see.
I could not sense.
How could I know?
How could I understand?
All that remained was a vague
image of the light and--
the ache -- the nothing --
The one circle within
not knowing what could be without.
I felt no joy, nor pain -- something
between the two called me.
But I saw the light still far
away,
And it called to me.
* * *
The ones beside me in the
dark...
I called to them, were they
there?
"Let us come to the light."
And there was nothing...
"The Sun..."
--And... "What..."
came a vague reply
accompanied by mumbling.
And again and again
I repeated "The Light."
Each time my voice was stronger
And the reply longer.
-- "What did you say?"
"Can we go out, into the Sun?"
-- "I thought...
-- "I like it in here..."
"Dawn is coming."
-- "Dawn... I guess we could...
-- "The Dawn is..."
* * *
Out of the dark box
I led the way stumbling
while mumbling the others followed.
Sluggish step-by-step I climbed
from the belly of Jonah's fish.
The dark cellar below, the narrow
staircase coughed me up on its
carpettongue
through the doorjaw I rolled out
onto a grey sea.
It was surely morning I thought.
A floating mess of wood
lingers on the lonely sea
...I climb onto the raft
and fall on my back.
But as I looked at the moonless
night sky -- I could not
see any sign of day.
Day so far off, long ago
I had known the light.
I thought, "Will the Sun ever rise?"
Somewhere nearby the buzz
of a redthroat hummer,
my albatross.
Sailors lost at sea used to follow
theirs to land.
I would follow... the red,
the fast-beating wings
of this super-animation.
My bird knows the Dawn...
I close my eyes, the darkness
is complete but the hum...
I open and the others float beside
me on the grey sea.
They climb onto the raft,
and their eyes follow the red.
Just then the break of day,
Orange-pink on the horizon.
Just a sliver, a small cut
bleeding from the grey skyn.
I feel the pain of day, my sleeping
body begins to awake.
My skin is crawling
As so slowly the Sun slips over the sea.
I am animated -- strangest of strange,
and I watch
a bright yellow flower on the raft
As it reaches
stretching, bending for the Sun.
It is surrounded by the pinkish aura,
its inner means of outer growth.
The anima who seeks the light...
My head turns and sees
a school of fish
churning toward the Sun
breaking the surface in Joy
feeding on the food they find.
Inward my mind rolls upon itself
contemplating the scene, the Sun.
Outward my eyes gaze driven
by the heat of a hungry heart.
reaching Sunward as the flower.
I see the dark box again inside
and then I look outside
at the ones beside me.
And I see them inside me now
But they are vague visions
Shadowforms of unreality
waiting...
Hoping for the illumination
of a new sun
growing within me.