~ After “I took my way down, like a messenger, to the deep,” Leonora Carrington; 1977
What are those lights flashing red and blue
in darkness? Herald of an accident, abduction,
a death; a body camera turned on to record
one grainy testament after another? A rain
of colored fragments streams from dark
lanterns that keep our dreams. The soul,
they say, travels from one depth to another,
calling out to all its familiars even as it
negotiates escape. Take care not to grow
more weighted in your descent— touch
the spirals of time set into the walls
and flex your toes in readiness: at rock
bottom, push off and aim for a distant marble
that could be the moon, or the light it poured
into a basin someone left at the window.
