Winging It.

Winging It

   In coming to terms with the depth and width
   of the grave, with the sound of tumblers
   in a lock chance picks, raven-like, it's beak
   needled for precision
   in the complex chemical

   and emotional equations
   of what's possible or inoperable, you wing it
   into remedies and therapies, into cathodes
   like time lines in the growth-rings
   of a skull plate or femur.

   You blend the essential oils of bergamot and lime
   with copper oxide, a home-grown trick
   of the healing trade, passed down from the years
   your parents spent in Divine Light
   and then some rural ashram
   where, among the organic rules of Ananda Marga
   a three-point tantric yoga position
   and a rainforest view, when surfacing
   from under the heft and weave
   of a Bengali prayer shawl, were all they needed.

   And while you've considered your options
   where fasting and meditation are concerned
   you've not the discipline to maintain them
   so you tough it out
   through a list of expert opinions

   and trials of drugs
   with names that sound like the heavy industry
   that spawned them.

   You don't talk about the stained balaclava
   your medication wears, in public
   or how you know The Light is pin-holed
   and binocular at the end of The Tunnel.

   You'd rather discuss
   the lit-up binary codes
   at work in the tail of a dugite
   or blue tongue of a lizard, how the seed-trails
   of hakea pines are hot-wired
   into the heads of black cockatoos at birth.

   You never thought you'd have to try so hard
   to keep things on the rocky side
   of what's functional and real.

   Ask anyone who has limited time
   and they'll most likely say
   through the barricades of their teeth
   or the open portholes in their skin, that time
   or what's left of it, should be attended to
   with all the wild resolve
   that being human can manage.

   Well, yes, but what about the utterly
   ridiculous and sublime, like driving naked
   into the country at night, the windows down
   the Razorback Ranges
   throwing wet green sky all over you.

   There is much to see and do
   but you don't renew your passport
   or imagine postcard scenes
   from deep in the wicker deckchair
   of your retirement
   on a liner docked at Pago Pago
   or recline in the high sweet air
   of a day-dream of youth
   when health was simple as breathing.

   You're in trouble
   and no matter how often you throw
   the wide cast-net of your philosophy
   or opt for silence
   after you've talked yourself to your knees
   in the waiting rooms of prayer
   you can't shake this sense
   that it's all about to be explained
   if not for forever, then for good.