avalon in acheron

      

I’m sinking and I feel the rootlets scratch

My arms as if I walked along through briars

Or falling down a manhole to the drains

On minute passed - and more - just sliding by

I worm my way through time between the stones

Down in among the microbes and the grubs

And squeezed between the hard place and the rock

Then - nothing - falling down through space

And landed where ?

On some forgotten shoreline in the dusk

A river runs beside the shore in flood

The hungry spectres massing on the shore

Their hollow eyes are looking into air
So many and so many and so few

A ferryboat is loading while I watch

Its packing them together like sardines

They’re looking out with eyes that do not see

They climb aboard

As anywhere is better than to stay

I looked across the river in the gloom

Where they were going , I could hardly see

Their sorry shapes had given up all care

I don’t know if the nothingness was worse

Or feeling nothing better than to go -

I think they may be only in my dream

A sail board bleached as white as any bone

Lay on a rock

The choice was easy and I pulled it up

 The boat was flattened like an ancient rock

Scarred circle woundings from a suckered foe

I ran my hands across its pitted boards
Old meetings with the hungry ones below

In icy depths where humans never go

Where it has been - but still it is here now
Engraved and old

And solid underneath my feet - but cold

The water’s oily , lifeless and it’s chill .

I hoist the sail - we move across the dark

The sea becomes the Ocean of the Dead

I see a shape in darkness up ahead

I aim to go

It is a shape that I already know

I step out on this strange , familiar shore

There is a glow of apricot and lime

The people wander round - all made of sand

In glassy shells , shaped almost like a man

But some are eaten almost all away

And all that’s left inside that I can see

Are organs, resin , coloured red and blue

Each artery in scarlet and each vein

is turquoise and the nerves are threadlike white

Their lungs are green

their livers and their kidneys can be seen

And it’s as clear as they are - If I stay

Somehow I will become like this as well

that I will join them and I really must

Get home somehow - I have to get away

To somewhere where the people still are wrapped

But my heavy limbs won’t lift me up to go

A voice inside is telling me to go

I must not stay

But they come and suck my flesh out anyway

We wander round , all shiny and exposed

All visible .This is the Isle of Glass

People .Unfleshed and plastic and on show

Our entrails shining pink for all to gaze

The light is luminescent all around

A giant sunflower petal blocks my sight

- when I say “ Giant “ I mean - it is to me

I do not know what kind if scale we’re in

Only that I could walk along for hours

And not fall from

This long and twisted shiny yellow arm

Between the yellow petals I can see

That all the glassy people start to sprout

Odd tendrils and more arms are now on show

Sprout buds and flowers like angels , dragons , sprites

So changing , complex , melding and entwined

And all the while they’re turning into flowers

And pollen puffs in multicoloured showers

A coloured stain

Is spreading slowly outwards from this rain

And then are swelling pods and shells and fruit

And soon the glass is splitting and the seeds

Or every kind and no kind , bursting out

And landing on the earth and in the sea

And washed in foam and bobbing up and down

So tiny on the vastness of the deep

They float just where the current flows along

Each single cell

Is carried by the river out of Hell

And from the cavern’s open , jagged mouth

The seeds emerge like tiny specks of dust

Under the sky - not sinking - but they float

And come to shore and stick and then take root

And this is us - from one or other

River or from other tides

Our roots go down

And find a way between the stones and earth

    Just reaching for the river underground .

     
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