Old Souls Walking

so we were in Ashley's apartment,
sitting on the floor with dim lights and cheap wine,
and Colin and I had taken to a conversation on the sophisticiation
of human consciousness over the many periods of time.

I watched my brother take elements from the ether,
handfulls from the invisible kitchens of self,
with which he began to kneed this conceptual dough.
we spoke and we marveled and we drank our wine deep,
and the life inside this primordial bread took its breath to rise,
and we had the beginnings of a king's feast.

I watched Colin put his hands on his chest,
like he knew a sign language that could glean the truth
from the air in his ancient breath.

"what if there's something invisible," he said,
"like a tube, between me and you and the trees,
connecting all life, reaching back three billion years
to our original home in that perilous sea.

"what if we listened more?
what if the only sounds we ever made
were songs we scribbled on our skins
and we brought them with us at night,
naked at lakesides, begging the stars for midnight swims,

and we'd sing them to each other,
if only first to be sure we gave thanks for the day,

maybe floating in the water, we'd watch the night's muses walk across our lake
and you and I,
would become more humble,
and in doing so maybe could become entangled in each other's minds,

we like to think we're at the peak,
that anything outside us is an exercise in simplicity,
but I think there are higher places,
that we live inside too much,
we stopped talking to the natural world,
and the memory of where we came from has atrophied inside us.

I mean I've sentenced my feet
to a life of listening to my shoes speak to concrete
while my body lusts for the curves of a river,
and my eyes are homesick for mountaintops I've never seen,
and when I walk through praires I feel, like I'm at the heels of a lover
running in the milkweed

what is this?"

people like Colin speak a dead language, fluently.

he is the smoke-laced, story-telling breath remnant
of sailor's from past lives who spent their nights
convincing lady Ocean to let her hair down

she is the small child
who comes in from outside and says to you
"i have been speaking to the trees..."
and for some reason you believe her

they are old souls walking

he is aurora borealis, borne just once more in the skins of humans,
plucked from a path that would've brought him through the sun,

he has seen the dance after death,
those that gather above the world's poles,
to recite the end of their story and burn away
the final celebration for the souls of old

the weight of many lives
and the weight of the ways
they've learned to love the world so many times
cannot topple the joy they offer you and I

so my friend,
have you a drink tonight,
think on those native spaces,
go back to the waters of winter's freeze,
to moon and star and muse speaking free,
where they know your timeless language

and take your neighbor at that bar
offer them stories, give them laughter
and then kiss 'em, kiss 'em good and hard

wherever you are tonight
break from this place and revisit the muse,
give Icarus my best and,
now, listen
leave these skins to the fools.