running through halls of a very old college

on a team... competing in a race. Blue jersey & shorts.

my brother is there - I've only in recent years come to know him again

he's cheering me on from the side

I try running as fast as everyone else, but am unable. I think it's because I've not trained at all for the running. (past obstacles in the race had to do with ... a fist fight, which I won easily - knowing I at once lost to the same competitors). I remember that in my childhood I was very fast - maybe the fastest among my peers.

I'm rounding the corners of the halls.

in slow motion my teammates cheer me on.

two of my teammates wait ahead at a pool where I will have to find the final goal (flag?). They wait in the pool - I run to and jump in it. They assist me to the bottom. My shorts fall off. I look for those, feeling like I've won already (I must have). The girl stayed at the top of the pool. .... or... she swam back to the top (her duty fulfilled). The guy helps me briefly look for my shorts. ... I swim deep. The bottom of the pool goes forever and becomes the bottom of a lake... I don't find my shorts. ... but I don't feel naked (though I am). I swim to the top, the waterline. I move, still underwater, towards the rim - or what is, rather, a shore. ... I ascend and walk up the shore. ...

my surroundings are no longer the school. ... I'm in a beautiful world - maybe in the mountains or far away high hills. It's much like farm land - only more quaint and less spacious. The girl from the top of the pool is leading me. I only see her as she quickly moves around - she looks as though she's discovering something new. ... but she has been here before or something - because she's guiding me through - her voice leading me and telling me what's happening.

Without voice, I question the female on what happened, where I am, what's going on? I mention that I was just in the pool - where's the pool? She points behind me and describes what was the pool...

I turn around to see a top, which should have been the rim of the pool, floating in the sky. ... it's really the waterline. .... or A waterline. Below is the volume of water. it is still - but pouring infinitely into the basin of the lake from which I emerged. The water source is set back ... and, though I know what it is, it oddly looks much like a water fall. ... Maybe it's only my mind trying to make sense of it. ... yet, surrounding the avian source, I see the blue clouded sky behind it.

Not far from the shore is a dirt road. across the dirt road is a short fenced in house. The road is an 'L' shaped road. One side runs in front of the house - the other runs along the left side. (from my view - from the front). I walk along the side of the farm style house. I don't recognize/know it, but as with everything else, it is incredibly familiar.

In the back of the house, in the grass, are quite a few great big coal bison - almost like yaks, with their long hair. Antlers coming from their heads are enormous. They are at least the size of their body, but hanging in a complimentary frontal position from their heads. Adorned like a shield from anything oncoming. They are breathtaking and frightening. I move to a position near them. I am confused as to what this all is.

in the final action of the narrator, she pulls the visage of the bison from the beings. The first is a face I recognize, but have never seen. I know it is my great great grandfather. But in the dream, to me, he is my son - or my own offspring. As the other bison skins are removed, I realize they are my family from that generation of my heritage.

Then everything is revealed to me - or makes sense to me - as I turn to look behind me, from the way I came. (the lake is not in my sight, though I would be looking in it's general direction. ... it would be in my peripheral to the left). I see the road stretch down into a big valley. The hills are tree covered with yellow (white barked, gold/yellow small leaves) and light beige (?) trees (like the Appalachians??). The sky has become ashen cloudy - like there was an eruption from a volcano. Pouring from the sky are large heated chunks. Only a few are lit with flames. All of them fall with no sound. ... In fact, sound did not exist, except the woman's voice, until this moment. Now, as the sky hails destruction, I begin to hear the high pitched ring of my nervous system as it's married with the low of my blood stream. I watch as these masses of grey pelt the side of the hills. But it only lasts for a moment before the large objects turn to an ashen snow. That is the moment when I could hear again. Though there was nothing to hear, I was coming alive slowly. I could hear the delivering timbre of chorus, sacred. I hear them joined by the violin and the cello last tying the threads of wonder with the viscereality of time.

It is 1815 in Switzerland. My twice great grandfather is born. I am at this moment in time, seeing beyond sight - through the eyes of the father of this child.

This is the fourth pageant.

03/13/2010

Author's Note: This is, obviously, not a traditional poem. Nothing I write really is anymore. This is the fourth entry in a series I've been working on the last few years, "The Six Pageants". This is the raw writing - the unedited transcript of my thought.

Posted on 03/13/2010
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