Odyssey Of My Icarian Spirit
© Surazeus
2018 03 08
Four years before the new millennium
I hitchhiked from Seattle to Miami,
crossing the Mississippi River east
for the first time when I was thirty-two,
after I stayed in Denver for one year,
singing epic poems while I strummed guitar.
While strolling in the rocky Rainbow Mountains
I saw visions of the Goddess of Corn,
gentle Onatah, walking in the wind,
long black hair flowing over the whole land
blessing our souls from sea to shining sea
as I gazed east where my ancestors arrived.
After riding in the car for five days,
from Denver through Dallas past New Orleans,
leaving high mountains behind for orange groves,
we arrived in the city of shining towers
where ancient spirits walk the sandy beach
with laughing mermaids who sing each to each.
After dwelling in house of fifty cats,
I walked away from the city of cars
and lingered all night on the misty beach,
listening to the ancient song of the sea
that reveals how coiling genes of our soils
first sparkled at the swirl of gushing vents.
When the sky glowed pink as cheeks of Iduna,
long before the sun gleamed above green waves,
I sat on white sand and strummed my guitar
to sing the evolution of mankind
when we came down from the trees without tails
and learned to walk upright in surging waves.
While strolling on the vast shimmering beach
I felt the spirit of the wizard Emerson
flash beside me in the whispering wind
who also walked the sands of Florida
one hundred and seventy years before
to translate the code of the mystic sea.
Though we exist in this body of flesh
before chemical functions generate
conscious spirit of our self-aware soul,
we transcend the limits of this meat shell
to become one with the whole universe,
feeling our atoms first forged in the sun.
I watched the sun gleam gold over green waves,
and realized with awe that I stood again
on shining shores of the Atlantic Sea
for the first time since my ancestors sailed
from island of England to Massachusetts
three hundred and sixty-six years before.
Since my first ancestor in America,
Anne Bradstreet, wrote poems at her wooden desk,
her descendants traveled ever westward
on endless odyssey for paradise,
leaving Babylon for the Promised Land
on the Oregon Trail to Idaho.
I traveled back east over mountain ranges
on the vast highways of America
across windy prairies and rolling hills
to stand again on wild Atlantic shore
and hear the spirit in the gusting wind
that urged them west into the wilderness.
Why did you follow the sun in the sky
westward from Scythia to Scotland, and on
across the wind-swirling Sea of Atlantis
over the past ten thousand years of hope,
searching for more lush lands to colonize
where our children play free among fruit trees?
Each ancestor lies dead along the trail
from the Caucasus on to the Cascades,
their corpses fertilizing the wheat fields
of every nation from Sumeria
to Oregon where I walked by the sea,
longing to sail on to the Sunrise Land.
How far backward along the ancient trail
my ancestors migrated on their quest
for pristine wilderness to build new castles
must I journey on private odyssey
to find the lost valley of my first homeland
and see again the vision I still follow?
Alone on the beach where the wild winds roam
I see the Red Princess in castle tower,
holding the red rose and the scroll I gave her,
then Melusine reaches out her pale hand
and calls to me across a thousand years
to sing the legend of her river tears.
Just as I think my body will dissolve
into white sand that shimmers on the beach
moonlight illuminates face of the wizard
when Emerson removes mask of my ego
and weaves angel wings on my bleeding shoulders
so I leap on current of Icarian spirit.
From mute dust scattered in the sea-wild wind
I transform into the owl with golden eyes
and fly over vast land of Onatah
concealed under mask of America
then land on Mount Takoma with new harp
to sing odyssey of my Icarian Spirit.
© Surazeus
2018 03 08
Four years before the new millennium
I hitchhiked from Seattle to Miami,
crossing the Mississippi River east
for the first time when I was thirty-two,
after I stayed in Denver for one year,
singing epic poems while I strummed guitar.
While strolling in the rocky Rainbow Mountains
I saw visions of the Goddess of Corn,
gentle Onatah, walking in the wind,
long black hair flowing over the whole land
blessing our souls from sea to shining sea
as I gazed east where my ancestors arrived.
After riding in the car for five days,
from Denver through Dallas past New Orleans,
leaving high mountains behind for orange groves,
we arrived in the city of shining towers
where ancient spirits walk the sandy beach
with laughing mermaids who sing each to each.
After dwelling in house of fifty cats,
I walked away from the city of cars
and lingered all night on the misty beach,
listening to the ancient song of the sea
that reveals how coiling genes of our soils
first sparkled at the swirl of gushing vents.
When the sky glowed pink as cheeks of Iduna,
long before the sun gleamed above green waves,
I sat on white sand and strummed my guitar
to sing the evolution of mankind
when we came down from the trees without tails
and learned to walk upright in surging waves.
While strolling on the vast shimmering beach
I felt the spirit of the wizard Emerson
flash beside me in the whispering wind
who also walked the sands of Florida
one hundred and seventy years before
to translate the code of the mystic sea.
Though we exist in this body of flesh
before chemical functions generate
conscious spirit of our self-aware soul,
we transcend the limits of this meat shell
to become one with the whole universe,
feeling our atoms first forged in the sun.
I watched the sun gleam gold over green waves,
and realized with awe that I stood again
on shining shores of the Atlantic Sea
for the first time since my ancestors sailed
from island of England to Massachusetts
three hundred and sixty-six years before.
Since my first ancestor in America,
Anne Bradstreet, wrote poems at her wooden desk,
her descendants traveled ever westward
on endless odyssey for paradise,
leaving Babylon for the Promised Land
on the Oregon Trail to Idaho.
I traveled back east over mountain ranges
on the vast highways of America
across windy prairies and rolling hills
to stand again on wild Atlantic shore
and hear the spirit in the gusting wind
that urged them west into the wilderness.
Why did you follow the sun in the sky
westward from Scythia to Scotland, and on
across the wind-swirling Sea of Atlantis
over the past ten thousand years of hope,
searching for more lush lands to colonize
where our children play free among fruit trees?
Each ancestor lies dead along the trail
from the Caucasus on to the Cascades,
their corpses fertilizing the wheat fields
of every nation from Sumeria
to Oregon where I walked by the sea,
longing to sail on to the Sunrise Land.
How far backward along the ancient trail
my ancestors migrated on their quest
for pristine wilderness to build new castles
must I journey on private odyssey
to find the lost valley of my first homeland
and see again the vision I still follow?
Alone on the beach where the wild winds roam
I see the Red Princess in castle tower,
holding the red rose and the scroll I gave her,
then Melusine reaches out her pale hand
and calls to me across a thousand years
to sing the legend of her river tears.
Just as I think my body will dissolve
into white sand that shimmers on the beach
moonlight illuminates face of the wizard
when Emerson removes mask of my ego
and weaves angel wings on my bleeding shoulders
so I leap on current of Icarian spirit.
From mute dust scattered in the sea-wild wind
I transform into the owl with golden eyes
and fly over vast land of Onatah
concealed under mask of America
then land on Mount Takoma with new harp
to sing odyssey of my Icarian Spirit.
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