In the hush between two oceans crest,
a man in sunsets golden yellow orange
sleeps on the warm gray flank of a dreaming hippopotamus,
His ascend, one silver ladder propped against its ancient hide
like a question no one dares to finish, or a statement so bold it draws imagination.
Above the cobalt tide, a stone tower crowned with a wooden house
leans into the wind, its own ladder climbing into cloud.
Inside the burning orange room the sea has invaded, waves crash in white thunder against cracked walls
while butterflies of white ivory, ochre, obsidian, flame, and pearl dance, then
ride the foam through a golden window that opens onto another sky entirely.
Higher still the great winged titan unfurls star-pierced membranes of burnt sienna and night,
many-breasted, fire-crowned, cradling smaller gods while pointing toward the bent elder whose white hair streams like comet tails across a bleeding sun.
He bends, reaching down with fingers of golden saffron light
that split the dark into trident rays.
Beneath that radiance a pale figure kneels, back turned to the world, draped in moon-cloth, gazing up at the vast mottled orb blue, rust, emerald, coal, and obsidian gold, spilling its speckled light across the void.
And from that light a bleached world rises: a woman in periwinkle blue stands among spectral flowers,
her shape half-erased by textured white wind.
Behind her a black iron staircase spirals into unfinished houses,
doors opening onto more doors, stairs climbing into memory.
All boundaries dissolve.
The hippo breathes the orange room and Butterflies become stars on the titan’s wings.
The elder’s trident ignites the orb in flameless fire, the kneeling figure becomes the woman in blue.
The ladder on the hippo becomes the staircase in the white wind do that all souls that wash upon the sea can climb into the sky and the sky pours them into the room until every colour of cobalt, ember, bone, gold, infernal red
bleeds into one endless, breathing dream.
And the sleeper smiles,
still lying on the hippo’s back,
as the universe gently rearranges itself
around his orange heart while the sky watches in envious awe..