Swimming Against the Current
[Note: You will see in the work below connections to other poems I have posted here. Those poems are tangents to this poem that more completely tell the tale of rise, pride, hubris, fall, and reckoning. -- DT]
Wire me up!
Run that current through my head!
Suck the marrow from my bones!
I’m swimming with the mermaids now,
strapped to this merciful bed.
I walked among the dinosaurs, noble cursed beasts.
I crawled out of Armageddon's hole,
and from the rim I spied,
far across the land scoured by the rivers of time,
the light breaking bright, the new dawn
of the land I was made to belong.
Atop the last icecap I took my measure
of the distance to the new dawn treasure.
Ol' Sol indolent, I was betwixt the gloam and the glare,
that old lamp content to spill
only the slimmest of glimmer
to show me the way.
"Monkey man, what is your plan?"
winked the one-eyed cat,
grinning a-tooth, predator of dusk and dawn.
"To go to where I am called, to that land meant for me."
"Don't lose your way, fun it may be",
dissolving into the dark, the tiger whispered.
Starlit I took a confident stride; I could do that now.
My pace became a chase, more and more aglow,
as I sped along to the quickening gleam of the new dawn.
Thunderstruck, I exploded into the truth:
I lit the way. I was the Dawn!
I was blind. Now I see.
Look at what they built.
Look at what they built for me!
as I marched under a noon sun,
now humbled to pave for me
the glistening path into the heart of my new city,
with sweet asphalt aglimmer.
Now I see my triumph so clearly.
I climbed no mountain.
I swam no sea.
The mountain fell and the sea ebbed.
I towered before them and they fled,
along with mermaids now in dread.
This was no rain forest fantasy.
It was a sun-scoured desert of hard-lit truth.
My desires gelled into thoughts,
my thoughts muscled into words.
Words to be heard!
The only words that will be heard
in my desert oasis shorn of all
but justice pristine.
At the far edge of my realm the tiger appeared.
He laughed and he sneered, the desert seared.
The truth was hard-lit.
I was blind. Now I see.
My kingdom fell to the next savior's Hell:
"Your words are caged, safe on no stage.
"You crawled to speak them; now crawl to eat them!
"Only then can we begin and make you a True Man again."
My heart defeated, but unhumbled, could not bear his love.
So now I drown in the sea of compassion spilt
from Leviathan's crucifiers of man.
Evil, black, and vile …
I’m nothing more than love’s wretched excess.
But loved I am nonetheless.
Floundering in this sea of brotherly love,
the mermaids dare not rescue me.
Rancid, rank, and reeking … they know me all too well.
A little greased lightning through the temples.
Teeth a-chattering, eyes a-rolling.
Traitor, lawyer, molester,
God bless them all.
I'm gonna have a hell of a headache
and a few chipped teeth … oh well.
The perfect mate for a long-toothed gal.
I'm cured, it's true.
So now it's time to say good-bye.
The mermaids have called.
Time to find my way home.
But where is home, my journey's end?
I rose only to fall to another
who also rose and too will fall.
Stardust I was and a man I became,
only to be dust again,
dust in the dirt never to rise again.
Surely there must be more to me.
So I struggle, struggle to stand!
I have pride. I am rock. I will stand.
The mermaids circle me, pulling at my knees.
"Bend!" they cry. But I defy. I am rock!
And I drown in a deep water ecstasy.
I was blind. Now I see.
Pride has always been the end of me,
damming love's flow into a heart unhumbled,
blinkering my eyes from the shimmer of grace,
the shine of the true dawn
of the land I was made to belong.
Copyright © Dick Tugwell | Year Posted 2022
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