patches of a poet’s last missives from their journey around loalo,

lived by a currently-unnamed author, brought by a traveler who happened to encounter them;

while everyone on Loalo takes the river journey eventually, they are all quite different

as the author themselves observes, this is just one journey . . .

"this is only the report of my own map"


"On Loalo, when you have guided your canal,
and received your adult name,

you adventure onto 


the river


the River

there is only The River


all stemming back to the same source,

a river by many names but all one river 

that stems from the central mountains

and, through its wandering ways in all directions,

wraps around the whole of the world before 

returning together to open 

into a wide and fruitful delta.



Islands abound. Many wooded,

some only with a single tree,

some wooded with mystery.

 

There is no question, only a call.



Nothing so simple as words.

Nothing so plain as speech.

Nothing to be taught.



Only a feeling in the bones.

Only a hearing with the marrow.

Only a continuing awakening towards expansive sensitivity.

 

You see, on this journey, if you survive,

you begin to sense through new hows.

 

The river knows. It wills you into waking.

Your potential is too potent to let you pass,

to leave you to be lost and become only past.

 

But to work with the river, you have to learn it -

and allow the river to really learn you.


The journey takes as long as it takes.

 

You must become ready.


You must swim, must seek, must starsoak.


You must journey the river of the world.


* ~ * ~ *

 

There is no map.

Everyone has taken the journey,

but the river is never the same.


Maps are ever and only for the 

journeyer’s own path,

and no true guide to any other.

 

The river is never the same.

The journeyer is never the same.


Every map is a trick of the light.

 

* ~ * ~ *

 

So you go.

As you are.

 

You gather.

You say goodbye.

You make your peace.

And you melt into what will be.

 

Some struggle.

Some find it hard to handle.

Hard to leave their lives,

their high dives and hip jives,

all the dips and dances that they think help them thrive alive.

 

In extreme cases, the planet has been known to move the river to the resistant.

 

Everybody journeys.

 

Everybody.

 

And it’s never easy.

And it’s sometimes nice.

 

And some wouldn’t want to do it twice.

 

* ~ * ~ *


Saw the nearer and the farther stars above me.

Saw them someways never known before by me.

 

I had coasted the gold-green currents around Hio, 

slipped the silver in moonlit shoals under sight of those stars I couldn't see, 

and narrowly missed capsizing in some obsidian rapids when a jagged edge clipped my boat and ripped its weaving ragged, and I wound up

1. without a wound, and

2. with a spectacular view of the slowest sunset of the year!!

 

Am still drifting. Still soaking it all in.

 

Here the river fades out of a steady climb 

with a flow that reduces into a lazy drift.

The bend carries everything in a loose arc 

over the top of a highbroad limestone arch 

The arch connects into a cliff capped by a 

deceptively deep and quiet lake covering a

honeycomb intricacy, flowered with hyacinths, 

which cobwebs the cliff from crown to root.

 

The drop to come is the river's current challenge,

after a tangle of currents carried me off my map.

 

These are the river's questions.

This is how water speaks to me.


* ~ * ~ *


no narrow miss today.

too close yesterday, should have listened


I can hear the river, the fish, the algae

I can answer the calls of this wild


I can’t hear my own body


Don’t know how.

Don’t know what to listen to.

Lost myself in myselves.

 

Hard to find much poetry when in this much pain.

 

The fall from that arch is a far one,

towards misting fans of rainbows

caught in the waterfall's sprays

 

The trick – this I’d heard about, but there’s no way to know any given moment’s way –

is not to fall. Speak to the butterflies, they say. Send the whispers on those currents that wind and whip down, down, down the cliff into the grottos favored by the Aelio,

and call the Aelio out to carry you down, down, down across the changing currents.

 

no, not to carry.

 

this was my mistake.

 

I called them to make me a carpet, one woven of their glowing bodies and efferfluent lumenhoney. My clan had long communicated with them, and I believed I knew how.

 

And I… I called for more. And more. More. More. MORE.

 

The beauty, the ease, the flight –

to soar through the subtle heats of sweetwaters –

this is what my dreams were made of. This I loved. This I wanted wanted wanted.

 

So we swept in swift swoops, and me whooping with glee,

the glittering trail of a nova of Aelio ever longer, vaster, faster, faster, faster –

 

and I never noticed as they began vanish.

 

they know how they’re meant to work together.

I didn’t know anything.

they burned with rebellion.

my will ate their protests up.

 

they tried again, more at once though most still made mad by me.

then water got in their veins.

too much hydrogen.

they burst and burst like a nova hearse.

so I summoned more.

 

at last they all tore apart at once,

vanishing to anywhere, who knows where,

and i fell.

 

Farther down are the flutterwings, 

the friends you most want for the final descent.


They can carry you beyond the rumblethrumming water 

that tumbles over ruins never explored since their first finding. 

There are many rooms. Courtyards. Gardens. Plenty of places to get caught. 

It’s the most dramatic, dynamic, dangerous part of the river up until that point. 


Maybe I was afraid.

The flutterwings saw how I treated the Aelio.

They gave me about as much respect as I did the Aelio.

I’d say that was generous.


* ~ * ~ *

 

Bad injury. Beyond ruins.

Banks too high, water too fast.

No rest on land, no rest on river.

Only the river.

Only the river.

The river of only.

The river is only.

Lonely.

Lonely.

Only the river.

Only the river.

Only.

Only.

 

* ~ * ~ *

 

Today the river has a different energy.

Different relationship. Different communication.

A new kind of communion for us, for we.


Sky dark, stars clouded.

Now the rumbles span the sky. Hot rain hits and hits and hits.

My boat drifts, the thatch patched patched repatched with moss, mycelium, pitch.

Aelio buzz by. We speak. Over an unknown number of nights and days and in a fever daze, I survive their trial to regain their trust. Just in time. 

The horizon writhes with storms, swollen red-electric. 

 

Last sight before I meet this marvel on my horizon:

 

Far above, through faint breaks in the storm-bound clouds, I glimpse the ultraviolet

tailtrails of the imwama. My first. So large they have twelve wings, with an iridescence that can be seen only with ultraviolet eyes.

 

And something opens in me as I realise we’re alive together. Above and below, in this moment before everything changes.

 

No, not before. Not before. Foolish foolish. Changing now. And now. And now. And –

 

* ~ * ~ *

[first portion of this entry damaged]

 

– how much I long for home home home home HOME I’m going to die out here and how I’m supposed to heal I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I DON'T NONONO NOT GOING TO DIE BUT WHAT DO I DO???!!!!


hurts. hurts. no one told me this kind of pain was possible. no one. no one.

have no one.

 

good die.



* ~ * ~ *


[this final entry delivered by the author to a witness, who recorded the words as 

the author was no longer capable of holding a pen or interacting with paper]

this is only the report of my own map. 

even if i cared to, i could not redraw it.

what I’ve seen may be seen by more, or may be never seen again. 

but beyond the storm’s jungle center, off the river and down a waterway as wide as my sight, where the waters cool and the blues of a velvet-dark sky swallow you thin, and crackling pillarbeams of lightning link the river below with the river of clouds above. . . there, all life contacts. 

every insect, every fish, every bird dances with the sapphire spindlesparks and then off into the night, now crackling, now vibrant, every quanta trembling with new tune. luminescent lilies grow in linked circles around the spots where the electricity meets water. ivy even climbs the pillars, weaves around the live and lithe light up and up to heights several times taller than a hume.


so I sailed in to one.

 

no time, no way, no will to study the properties of all the flora and fauna at home where and how i found myself. no way to know if the turquoise waters had made them the same as me.


my skin was veined with copper.

 

night sky blinked prismatic.

 

boat burned.

 

I . . .

            I . . .

                        I fly now.