« Face the Stream »

I am my own father
Diving – on a double-dare –
Underneath tens,
No, hundreds of hundred-year sequoia logs
On the Volga river,
From one opening to another,
On nothing more than one, long, life-long breath.
Reading – in the process – the millions of words
About what reality is and isn’t,
That are yet to be conceived, documented and published
On the one-day white-as-snow pages of paper.

I am my own father
Diving – on a cosmic double-dare of a life –
Through the numbing murk of the Volga river water,
Baptized, unwillingly, by an all-pervading blank stare
Of my own original face.

What did your face look like
Before your father was born, I am asked.
Same as now.
Same as ever.




pavel somov, afloat