The Bootstrap

I have built this place to get to her. Projected her like a shadow on my wall. A memory, a ghast, a shade, a thought. And from the fire that lasts I will make more than just a resting place. I will do all that I can to bring her back.

THE BOOTSTRAP

There is a tranquil silence by the waves

A calm out on the Ocean

I am building it here beneath the lighthouse

Down below in caves

My eyes wander to the foam

And up to the stars

Surely the past can still be touched

If it can be seen above

I put sweat into these aching gears

That twist and churn beneath the Earth

I put fire in these ancient bones

It's all that I can and have always done

I watched him wander like a devil

Gangly limbs all spiral out

And from his mouth nothing but lies

Discouraged words I now must doubt

Always forward never back

But on a long enough continuum

I pray to find her standing on the shore

Wading, waiting, evermore

I pray in ways meticulous

Hands machines miraculous

And play in my mind what words I'll say

When I meet my love again some day

Bring for me this cup

Dine with me this very day

Come along and we shall sup

And I shall show you the Machine

His tangled times a tale of woe

His words all full of salt

Lips a cracking bloodied mess

Hands are skin and bones

How could there be another us?

Splitting like the atoms do

Bringing blooming clouds so close

Ashes like shadows on the moon

I breathe this life into the work

Stretching down into the dirt

Where wires stretch and engines jerk

Churning, yearning, burning hot

I have visited horizons

When hence I shall be bone and chalk

And spoken with my own reflections

And found them all as lonely ghosts

Gaunt and grim we work in secret

Confessing all our sacred sins

To pictures we have painted

At the end of time herself

I have lain here by the marker

But that warmth within is gone

And birthed instead a better fiction

Of a future where the past is found

On this paradox I swear it

In symphonies I have not named

In opuses and grand arrangements

That I will see your face again

Photo Credit: Vladyslav Dukhin, Pexels, https://www.pexels.com/@vladyslav-dukhin/