Expanded Horizon

The horizon, my ancestors say,

is an eye. When it shuts

its lashes sift the sea for rafts

and turn fishermen and divers to stone,

their hands still clenched around pearls,

their blood turning crystalline and cold.

The gods were in love with the horizon.

They hung their jewels

on the night-sky and ebbed into the eye

while my people stared

at the orphaned trinkets.

The priestesses rummaged

through their rucksacks.

They rubbed twigs and killed goats.

They chanted and chanted

until their voices felled the trees.

The gods have vanished.

The storms and smog have snatched

their jewels from the sky.

When the skies cleared, we saw a sun

not even ours.

2.

The horizon is a lover of light.

Look: The galleons came and went

and none were turned to stone.

3.

Ours is a history of consequences.

He who fails to look back.

And what is there to look forward to?

What is left but light? He who runs fast.

When the galleons came, no one ran.

We bartered our tongues

for something to chew on,

our hands for a fistful of sand.

The priestesses rummaged through their rucksacks.

What is left but light? A stray grain of rice,

the hard shell of a crab, a leaf.