Christopher Collingwood
Whale Dreams
Music is
the exhalation of emotion,
a melody
flowing between moments
seeping
upon the edges of consciousness,
like a
scent rides upon memory.
We all
hear it—
the
truth lingering in the quietness,
born in fragments of a nursery
rhyme;
a loneliness drifting upon a summer breeze,
searching for the fond days you no
longer remember.
They are
all echoes of the same song
the handprint that shaped the dream,
a whisper providing
purpose to existence,
the
rhythm that creates a world.
In the
time before words,
it was
the language of the ocean,
hope rippling on the endless
horizon,
a voice that was longing
to be heard.
Your
ancestors called it whale song,
the
birthplace of your innocence,
the
sound of a broken heart,
the
tragedy that welcomes love
hope
which nourishes the fantasy.
Life was
conceived on this sea of poetry,
the
truth born into the silence,
a lyrical dream of an ancient
leviathan
whose longing created the world.
A world
formed not in seven days,
but in
seven bars of the dreamer’s song
and
carved out of a moment in eternity;
a world
formed upon a heartbeat,
the tear that washed into an ocean,
anguish that gave breath
to the winds.
Humanity
created to be the voice,
the dream understanding the
solitude,
born to ask the questions
alluding
to reason and avoiding fallacy of words.
Hidden
in the depths of our uncertainty,
the
serenity never found in youth,
a generosity realized in the sorrow
of song
the unsettling
stillness, as you’re about to feel,
the universal whisper
yearning to know
Why am I alone?
_______________
Chris Collingwood was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. He completed university in Sydney and graduated with a degree in business studies. Chris has devoted his spare time to writing, with works published in Outposts of Beyond, Illumen, Neo-Opsis, Not One of Us, Empty Silos (Inwood Indiana Book), Fantastical Savannahs and Jungles Anthology (Rogue Planet) and various works as part of Oz Poetic Society.
Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: We opened the sequence of poems with a dream and a weighty question. And we close with a dream and another question. The inner space that is suggested in the poem sent me to the depths of the ocean instead of the far reaches of outer space. The artistic illustration called “Whale Song” (SpaceFrog designs) visually connotes a dance to a whale song, a whale dream.
