Crossing Boundaries

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I’ve just made my first artwork sale to a buyer in Canada. I am strangely pleased by this. Somehow it all seems more real when there are border crossings involved.

“The Kraken”

Out beyond the limits of the known
There be monsters
Tall as thunderclouds
Surging like tides
Scattering the sun’s jewels
In your path

Monsters

Ahead there are
Storms and marvels
The kraken and the great whale
Dragons clothed in lightning
Cold and wet
Fire and thirst

The compass dances, spins,
Flings itself into the sea!
The sails fill with strange winds
Smelling of murder and orchids
And green rivers
Hanging dark with mystery

Turn back now and you
Will have stories to tell
And grandchildren to listen
With shining faces
Warm fires
Soft beds

Sail on, and you will see
Monsters
Sail on, compass drowned
Charts burned
Lifeboats broken to splinters
Sail on

Sail on

And you will be changed
You will wear the stars like adamantine scales
And the moon like great pearly horns
And you will become splendid
And you will become vast

You will become a monster.

David Holcomb
Winslow, Arkansas, November 2014

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