Listen, now;
this is where the story gets really good.

Once conscripts
in the fleet of fate violent,
now only inheritors
of the mark of mystery;

once free to stay bound in irons
and to sleep in chains;
now there are temple paths
and distant cities of gold come a-calling.

So who now will rise up and strike forth
into the heart of dawn?

If you will it so,
then you must journey through the soul of night.

For footprints, once trailing a path through the wreckage
lead to a bottle, open on the ground-

(as lightning let down its hair,
shunting
and stabbing

thunderblack

over the reaches to the mountains beyond,
in between the scent of salt and the sound of the shore,
into the drunken sinking sundown-

sliding off naked stars
into the blankets of ocean waves
where sand slips into surf)

-a bottle lay open on the ground,

where scraps of memory tumbled out,
where scraps of sacred words
combusted into flames of feast and famine,

where scraps of scripts of saints
of time, signature, and distance
immolated under the grace notes of the open heart,

and a full measure of passions improvised
fancied itself the fire, and danced in the sparkening
under the veil of the night;

where, no longer bound by letters of the heartless bedestined,

they both hauled up and raised the black.

For love is a weightless anchor of light,
and an open rebellion against the agents of death.

Behold the horizon laughing in the sinking sundown.
Behold the gift of the wind.
Behold the map and the music.
Behold the sound of laughter unfurled in the kiss.

If you find a bottle like that, one day
(and I hope you do),
hold it to your ear.

You may hear the sound of magic.

For in the space
where hands like theirs meet,
the storm itself envies.