Our Childrens’ Land
by David Pollard
Thus do I love only my CHILDREN’S LAND [Nietzsche]
Water calls us away
in all its colours
refracted in its rosary of pearls
and further into its cobalt night
and tug of rise and fall,
rudder and sail,
gold and cinnamon
of desire
and indigo and carmine
away from finnis-terre
into the undiscovered
and remotest seas:
exiled from all our fatherlands
towards our CHILDREN’S LAND,
and unto all the future’s
fearful of . . .
Perhaps there is nothing
other than deeps
and roiling overspill
to test the final risking of fearwell
and wave and will.
The world
of neither bone nor earth but rain
cannot be held
within the fist that clutches,
pours against the sail
and through the fingers,
pulls the rudder of our thumb
hard against the emptying palm
toward too many terrors and joys
and glories.
I bid my sails to search and search
below the eagle’s hovering on bony wings
against the wind.
The soul and certainties
that dribble from the wounded sky
into the oceans of our longing
cannot be staunched.
David Pollard
Our Childrens’ Land by David Pollard first appeared in Issue 2 of Bare Fiction Magazine (April 2014).