reflections of
Swedenborg on an airplane tray-table
I am not the kind to write to you :
instead, I would just keep up my drömboken,
fill these journals as if they were hymnals
fill these silos with grain, silos with missiles
and jot small thoughts down as if stones.
What else really is there to do?
I would not wish to write to you :
letters are large like trains when they
pour into mailboxes and when uninvited,
they are mere slips of paper but can factor
into every remaining aspect of one’s day.
I know these
things, fair child, I do.
I know of ghost towns, I know of tall grass,
I know of family portraits in the attic and
I know of warm quilts and kerosene lamps.
these fine things remain unspoken —
for I do not write them, nor do they speak
and it’s an uncommon situation of silence
that all these parties together do keep.
I had a dream fit for Swedenborg :
I saw half the entire Holy
Bible march by
like chessmen under a Disney spell; in living color
came the kings and harlots of those desert days in a line.
it was a parade of names and crowns —and even a snake.
but this is dream — and
all is dream. letters
could be written, fair child, about a lot less.
I took a plane with ice on its wings from SFO to
and the same back, stopping in
a roundabout way of connecting some dots.
it would pain most people to detail with words this route :
such would be better served by maps sketched on napkins
in some
in dreams, planes are much like letters :
metaphors for the in-between found when
we have left point-A and are not yet to point-B.
these are dream-planes, planes without pilots, only
contrails far above our heads and loud engine
noise.
alone, we’re getting worse : what we connect with
is itself very disconnected. the
Danes have three letters
they are leaving out of international communications:
å, æ, and ø . . .
(they have in informal mechanisms placed an embargo
on their very own language : think about that some)
as not to cause confusion with non-Danes, wordless
is better perhaps than misunderstood, aloof leitmotif
this seems to be in these letters so often left unsent.
Mike Walker
is a journalist, writer, and poet who has published in
a variety of regional, national, and international publications. Outside of
poetry and literature, Mike mainly writes about youth culture, veterinary
medicine, ecology, and natural history. He
lives in