Question
Is there anyone out there?
I scream, larynx torn away
wind ripped from my lungs,
heart fire quenched by
thundering silence roaring outwards.
After a moment
I fall up from the ebon sands
Did I feel the atlantean redwoods cry,
the murdering gales sigh?
I wait for the echo,
a lifetime with an ear,
pressed to the unknown
listening intently whispering
to the pulsing dusk.
The echo comes not.
I stumble through the fogwebs
and Stygian nights
past wine-dark fields
'til the undiscovered ocean
about my ankles silently, softly slaps.
Is there any one out there
the hoarse whisper climbs
out at last over the
petrified deafness and blacken'd sea
borne on non-existent winds,
a desperate message in a bottle
of life washed away.
The echo returns
with battered gulls simpering,
wild buoys whimpering.
Who's there? I now yell
Whose there? moans the air
and with it the mourning after.
The morning after
comes no more.
-850108
Copyright © 1998 John B Cooke IV
House o' Poetry
Jack'n'Jim World