Heart
by Steven McCabe
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city,
No water anywhere
No voice like an echo calling,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,
You know you never will
(In your heart)
Never swim
To the heart of symbols carved long ago.
TV on a throne
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city,
No place to swim
No place to dream
No voice
Like an echo calling,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago.
In your heart you echo
The heart carved long ago,
You kneel in disbelief
TV on a throne.
No place to dream
No echo, calling like a voice,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,
You kneel in disbelief
The great ship going down.
An echo like a voice,
echoes,
And you will not
You will never
In your heart, still and quiet,
Swim
To the heart of symbols carved long ago.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear.
A place to cast aside demons
Far from the killing fields.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice
No water anywhere
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city
Heaving like a ziggurat on the plains beneath the flood.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear.
Swim into the heart of symbols carved long ago
Breaststroke upon tidal waves, push barrels of cinnamon sheaves
Buoyant amulets crest a tidal wave
Pages of an unbound book
Unbind slow-motion,
The sigil of a sun-god
No water anywhere
No clocks no grasshoppers no sky
No echo like a voice
No echo like a spinal column
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city
On the plains beneath the flood.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear,
Mirrored in reflection,
In your heart you reappear
On the plains beneath the flood
Breaststroke like a ziggurat
Curving like a spinal column
Sigil of a sun-god.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice.
poemimage 
This is really wonderful, Steven. I haven’t checked in in a while, but I’m glad I did. I love the sacred drone in the atmosphere of this piece. I love the almost relentless slightly shifting repetitiveness. I love the call to return to something deep and mysterious.
Thank you Jack. Nice to see and hear from you. I appreciate tremendously your insights, the depth you bring to your observations, and the way you use language.
Oh yes! This too makes me hungry to collaborate with you again, Steve! Fabulous, as ever.
Wonderful! You have an excellent gift. I do not have your talent for poetry – my style is old – very old, as am I. Nevertheless the great ship going down coincides nicely with this bit of prose I just finished: https://folkpotpourri.com/silent-anchorage-a-lonely-shipwreck/