gingatao

Listen. (from The Puzzle Box.)

Listen. Not to me. On a cool, clear night like this the traffics are louder. They hurrr by like bundles of compressed air whirlywinding someone home. The old man next door has gone to bed. He coughs his awakeness and will soon snore his dream.

This pen pushes black ink across a white page with a jumping, scratching rhythm. These next three dots are not a device they are a drumm roll… This last full stop is a rimshot crack.

The oceans from which you come continue in your breath, hear soft lines rhythm in and curl out. You are a continent composed of dreams, a land of mystery and miracles and your heartbeat I hear as the voice of God entrusting her creation to you.

This is not a metaphor nor an allegory nor an image. You are not a story you tell yourself. Your life is not an American Movie. Star light is real and brings the heavens to you to kiss your eyes and in this cold night voices purr in the street as drunkards roll home and cats pursue the objectives of their owners and an old grey muzzle dog’s tail thumps once on a bare wooden floor.

The moon speaks to him in his voice and to you in the voice of your blood and the ocean though miles away moils in each of your cells, salt water in your tears, salt water in your blood coloured by passion and the breathing you hear is not your own, nor mine but the voice of a child a thousand miles away, born before his time and waiting. Waiting for your eternal embrace, your warmth to bring him home and his mother in the clouds of morning, in the ever present sunrise, you can hear her smile in birdsong and in the crackle of dry leaves under bare feet.

Insects sing.

There is no other proof of your existence but this, the sounds that you hear, always, every sound ever alive in the tremor of the tiny bones hidden in your head. Imagine that, the slightest of vibrations creating all this clamour of life which never stops, is always warm and slow, fast and hot and though you may close your eyes you may never close your ears, not even in sleep wherein sounds will form the matter of your dreams.

And though you may close this book forever and never read another word, wordless the world will come to you and reveal itself to you and there is no other proof that you exist but this, that you are beloved of the earth and the creatures around you, insects and stars are quietly harmonising with your breath and the rhythm of the ocean enlivens us all, the moon’s voice is eternal and God whispers lullabies in breezes, rain storms, traffic and there beside you now, the ever present child drawing warmth from the murmur of your heart as it marks the patterns of joy, the echoes of pain, the wheel which never ceases to turn and touching you rolls on, it hurrrs as it turns slowly fading into just you, you alone, surrounded by and singing with the voice of God.

(The Puzzle Box by Paul Squires is available for purchase here.)