Panopticon


When I think of all the time
How many lives of the butterfly
Have I lived through?
Some only for a month some a year.

It means I must be billions of years old
I’m a dinosaur
A cave woman
A medieval princess
A Venetian boatman
A Polish farmer
A patriot of Paris
A Hills-man of Goroka
A sailor from Newfoundland
A farmer’s wife in Norway
A travelling medicine man in Wyoming.

The please and thank yous of this planet
Spoken out in intonations and
Guttural sounds – hand gestures
Facial expressions
Politeness of place
Forgotten to me now.

My travel through time and space has brought me to Pudsey in 2015.
I wonder – when I die
Will Malchus and Jonas (my guardian angels) take an arm each
And lift me out of my body
And gracefully glide upwards
And without fear or cold I’ll
View the planet as we circle it
Out of pure joy.

Seeing through depths of waters to the bottom
Seeing through every tree
Seeing through rock and mountain, village and cloud
Panopticon vision will be mine
Seeing through every heart into
The depths of each person

To their souls and greeting each one by name.

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