KENJI: THE WELL

After the woods and brambles
came the well: deep fathoms down,
barbed wire scraping through my brain,
my sole light an occasional star
on some lonely orbit.

Then came the filament, slight as gossamer,
dangled through the darkness
by a giant arachnid,
or so it seemed.
Slowly, i sensed this fine silk
had been spun not by a spider,
but a word.

As its syllables kept shifting,
scented with syllabub,
at first i thought it fickle,
and was wary.

But in time i learned
it had gazed on drought
in a dusty baobab
and been clamped and shamed
for breaching ancient laws.
Suppler than an octopus,
it had freed slaves
and sheltered outcasts with its coils.

It had spent years with the Tuareg,
travelled the old trade routes
to Samarkand and Timbuktu,
sailed the oceans on the backs
of whales
and on an Eastern beach
had buried a single egg.

It loved to play with echoes
and soothe a cobra with its sighs.
Because it was gentle yet implacable,
seemed omniscient yet had floppy ears
I came to love and trust it.

And so at length i climbed its thread,
luminous, smooth and silent
as a dream of levitation,
and emerged in the long grass
of a meadow, where the wind
was rustling the apples,
and once again i heard the whisper
of the sea.