Proteus

 

Proteus

 

I am in many forms before I am bound.

I am the starwalker who won't come down.

I am the pond dweller who won't come up.

I am a hawk on a hill.

I am a bear in a berry wood.

 

I am the giant of the deep

who walked the Earth for ten thousand years

before he went back to the sea.

I am the sleeping king

who mated with the Earth

and dropped his horns in due season

and grew them back

 

I am the blasted oak that drew the lightning

I am the man in the Moon

I am the Hanged Man, and the Emperor, and the Fool.

I am medicine and I am poison.

I am the springing tiger and the quaking goat.

I am the one who makes a prison of the world

I am the one who makes the world his playground.

I am the death lord on his dark throne

I am a humming bird courting a flower.

 

I am the heaven bird in the World Tree

and the dragon coiled at its roots

and the squirrel that makes mischief between them.

I am a shard from a mirror

that was broken in transit from a blue star.

 

To release me, you must tie me down.

Published in Here, Everything is Dreaming: Poems and Stories by Robert Moss

Photo by RM