From: marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Subject: night kayak to the dark side / Marek (1990)
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 05:42:49 GMT


                night kayak to the dark side
		-------------------------------------------------------------

                _in transit_

                water trickles off my oar blade
                midnight... is a time...  long time ago...
                i stir the lake so
                rivulet-squirrel-away-the-sound-tickle-trickle-slurp.
                rivulet-rivulet-water-water-drip-drop-slurp.
                rivulet-rivulet-water-trickle-bathtub-splash.

                it's not a bathtub.
                it's 14 thousand acres
                and it's dark dark dark.

                the world is ash.
                the world is silver and less silver.
                the world is rivulet-slurp.

                above my kayak my sky is hot and my burning hot
                in pinpricks
                in sight
                constellations and federal express to indy
                emory to dayton
                d.h.l. to louisville
                something else to cincy.

                the tricolor next-day air moths are bugging me
                in the canopy, in the crystal spheres, caught-like
                between the panes...  like wasps on a summer day...
                this is
                the last great wilderness for midwestern eye to see
                from this shining sea (of sodium)
                to that shining sea (of mercury)
                it's three.  o'clock.
                the moths about to sit still.
                somewhere oily somewhere stinky faraway.

                the world is fair and
                out of sight
                but looming forestside.

                rivulet-slurp-bathtub-splash.
                rivulet-slurp-trickle.
                rivulet-splash-dark-ash.


                _arrived_

                this is peace.
                hello.  hello.  have we met before.
                je t'adore, but i am afraid the answer is
                no.

                i am parked beneath a dead tree.
                it sticks out of me.  out of the water.
                it sticks out of the sound, the fiord, and it sticks out
                against the scheherazade sky.
                it just
                sticks out.  i can't say it any more plain.

                to my left, invisible, more trees.
                can't see the land for the trees.
                i can hear clumsy animals tripping
                over leaves.

                i can hear a hidden glasslike waterfall.
                i am on the water.
                i am hearing water.
                i have no clue where
                all this water is rejoicing.  to the left, i think.

                my tree is a velvet picture of elvis
                minus the elvis
                minus the velvet
                you get the idea.
                stars, stars and more stars
                and the tree
                what would it take to take thee
                with me?  a 1600 speed film pushed
                in time exposure
                from a floating kayak?
                good luck.  good bye, tree.

                i could bring back
                the clumsy animals tripping and
                the hidden waterfall rushing
                and i might...

                splash!!!

                i howl, h-woe!

                I can still hear myself
                fear and determination cooling to amber
                then to giddy then to dark
                echoing, echoing, embarrassing.

                why do multi-pound catfish do that
                to me
                don't they know i have a weak sense of
                serenity...

                no longer a visitor
                i've been forced to utter my cry
                i've left my signature, my spot, my mark
                i've said my hi
                i now know:
                my animal, clumsy animal sound
                is h-woe.


                _longing, leaving_

                time to go
                and leave this sacred site behind.
                i think it will be a while
                before i paddle back.

                2 hours by paddle
                and then one
                in the sound
                in the forest fiord
                in the invisible trickling waterfall land
                in the land in the water of dead trees
                and skies of elvis-less majesty.

                i will come back
                but not with that f.b.i. of a sun
                some things are better left
                uninvestigated and ashen fun.

                i may not come back at all.
                darkness, silver, pinpricks, flow.
                i have ran into peace
                and she don't recall
		
		me. h-woe!


			Marek Wojciech Lugowski
			18 April 1990
			Lake Monroe, Indiana


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