From "Letters to the World" series - Dear Alien

Dear Alien,

If you have sat on a rock at the shore of clouds

And watched vultures and swallows

Or perhaps a single mountain finch

slip and dip into the swirling smoky wave before you –

Or if that cobweb of sunlight

Caught under your feet

Has held you mesmerized for hours -

Then perhaps you have sometimes wondered about me too.

I live on the bed of the cloud sea

Where volcanoes heat the airs

And trees sway gently to cool it.

Above me swim owls, eagles and bats

And lizards that look like snakes and lions put together.

Before me rolls a thick world of water

And I can see the fins of a dolphin flying by.

There are crabs on the rocks.

Deep below, on the sea-bed of water, there are sharks older than my world.

There are worms like tubes and cucumbers,

and something walks like a table with three legs.

There are fish that carry their sunlight on their backs.

The world under their fin is thicker than the world under my feet.

I cannot imagine it.

But the cucumbers and tables

Must know about the creatures

Slipping and sliding silently inside the thickening world.

Deeper under the ocean bed must be wonders of other wings

Other fangs, other heels, other islands and shades.

And on the bed of that world perhaps there sits a person

Trying to imagine a creature it cannot imagine.

Dear Alien of the airy world

Perhaps one day I will swim up to you

with my clothes and hair glistening and wet with air

and drops of wind falling off my elbow

in round transparent spheres that will instantly disappear into the clouds.

I will tell you my name then.

Perhaps your name will be the same as mine

And for a second we will not know who is who.

Perhaps together we will wonder about the world above you.

We will be baffled by its thin, impossible wispyness

And declare it does not exist.

x