Depth Gauge

Image borrowed from Yahoo

DEPTH GAUGE

Standing on the sunlit bank,
Throw yourself into the stream, shadow and all,
If you are in substance ready to plumb the depth.
The experience you suffer daily is enough to appall:
Immersion in that material swamp --
contents not the forms;
Viewing the off-season family theater
from the crack in the stage door;
Star-struck neighbors hanging round, stiff with drink,
Animated bags, stalking before the floodlights,
And backtracking into the barren set.
There's furniture, sure, the place is packed,
But furniture just for the sake of mood.

You are seeking contact with the wild world,
Aren't you? beyond the daily tragedy,
Where unnerved Furies can be temporarily
tamed by gut-busting laughter, or
Where a saint, though crowned
by an atom-bomb blast,
Afterward stands an icon on a gentle knoll,
Glowing like the smiling Dali Lama.
Hey! Forget those black-light dashboard
skeletons in this scene.

Do you really need the wisdom
of bombastic Agamemnon?
Forever-after fearful of the bathroom?
That can't help much.
Naaaaah! For the scientist and the poet,
Creative data abounds
To study humankind in ways beyond the norm:
You know, fragrant thoughts of forests in Borneo
and the FM-band humming B. B. King,
the bard, singing "Hummingbird"
Just on the verge of twilight greening.

Come on then, The Bull has been sacrificed,
The Ram has run,
The Fish have played upon the horizon
in the celestial stream.
If you're going to enjoy the Water,
Fall, sun at your back,
Throw yourself in, shadow and all.

David R. Gilmour