Kaleidoscope
Picture yourself on a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
–John Lennon
For years, now I have been preparing for the journey–
heart sealed as tight as a drum
eyelids pulled down like shades
Sleep does not come easy
to an old child
who cannot be tied to a bed
whose mind even when weighted down by centuries
only floats to the ceiling
like a moon on helium without a string.
I have tried tying knots in my thoughts–-
clots in my blood even thicker
but I rise I rise
and float upward…
I am circling myself as I myself
am being encircled by the Unnamed
like a halo or a blessing.
I am light a spectrum of light
fingers filtering through the branches of trees
a shimmering screen suspended
in a universe of dilating skeyes—
impressionable pupils that take in everything
I am circling myself as I myself
am being encircled—a face slowly turning
reflecting the green of the fields below–
Consider the lilies it whispers
Eyes closing and opening like windows
onto brght tulips Irises blooming blossoming.
bulbs exploding like crocus into untold dimensions
(Who knows
where I have been–-
what I have seen
when I wasn’t looking)
I am the sea now with the sun sinking under me
and all my cells are singing
Wave upon wave
I wash away like a dream or a watercolor
I pour myself into the river
I am the river turning and returning–
a cool delirium in a clear stream of consciousness–
my boat brimming over with glass fish
I Eternal Spring…
am traveling light
am traveling blind–-
tears beading on my cheeks like crystals
then falling back into themselves
dissolving into their sequential
magical magnetic moment
of synchronistic being
turning turning
into the pattern of snowflake–-
a mere blink in the kaleidoscopic eye
It is an old pattern with a new twist–
an ancient rite of passage.
I am floating upward out of my body drifting
to a place where everything has happened before
and is about to again for the very first time
Like postcards I send to myself–-
I wish I were here
I wish I were here
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC by the legendary Tamibmuttu of Poetry London. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including Maintentant: Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, archived at the Smithsonian Institute and N.Y’s Museum of Modern Art.