Held Between

Living water
bouncing sound from one finger to another.
Shape travels like the sun
east to west,
a storehouse of stars that go inward,
getting deeper the further we look.

A map of the territory
has been colored and laid on the table.
Red and blue.
We travel up and down, the heart
always a beating constant.

Who was flowing
back towards the moon?
Two oars that sent ripples through the black water.
It was the only sound I could hear.
The darkened trees were far in the distance,
surrounding us
alone on the water.

We were unable to contain it.
Not just the one precious thing we held between us,
but the stars that tried to jump
out and overboard,
making food for the fishes that swam below.

Was it not our life’s work to hold it all in?
Except for the few days we gathered at the pyre
to release the fireballs we had created,
we never talked of such things.
It slipped through us,
accidentally,
forever.

It dissipated into the labyrinth.
The thing we had tried to carry and transport,
the screams we held
the laughter
the lifetimes of energy
escaped into the bramble of tunnels
and thin passageways lined with thorns.

We simply didn't know enough to
retrieve what had escaped.
We could not find the keys beside our shoes,
so close.

We now contained the light of nature,
the moon gave us a new skin,
Shiny and somehow both dark and light at the same time.
We noticed our mistake
and looked for the keys.
Those were the last vestiges of the world we cast off.
The waters and oars needed no coaxing to
follow our commands, nor
the weather which somehow began to bend at our will.

This is where the last year would migrate after ending.
Right here, this one place which contained all places
All lives and hopes
All mistakes and lovers.

The last year was in fact constructed
From the last vestiges of blood and skin we had salvaged from
the piles left out in the forest.
somehow we had sewn it up, constructing
what appeared to be a perfect replica.

It may have existed since the beginning.
But I would not know, I did not come from that time.
They sent me down with the last of the colonists and I have been here since,
piecing together the journey I forgot to write about.

From the very fabric of the labyrinth
I have created a replica of the past,
which when slightly tilted to the right,
shows what will come next,
though I have artistic license to bend the pieces as I like.
Perhaps the farmer and small town will be subject to pink grass and blue trees,
or none at all
and all will be absorbed into the labyrinth itself. 
I have been known to wander.