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
