Adventure, it is said, is a time, not a place,
A certain frame of mind, a certain fold
In the unwinding of years, between childhood and mortality.
It’s a wrinkle of the brain,
Unhinged and unhooked from the formless now,
A life on the verge of the barely suspected
With nothing to follow but whimsy.
We chased it, yearned for it,
We wished our lives to be more than ordinary,
And, looking back through clouded lenses,
It later seemed to have been so.
Do you remember a particular night
At the gates of an alien place,
Ink-black and soaked with desperation?
There was a moment when all eternity seemed there,
Nowhere to turn, no choice but acceptance.
We imagined long knives in the shadows,
Hidden in folds of darkness too deep to see
Anything that wasn’t a dream of hope and fear.
It’s strange how often eyes project what’s in the mind.
Yet, in the end, it was ordinary, wasn’t it?
Just people lived there; nothing magical, nothing even odd.
They had their worries. We were a brief diversion for them,
Just as they were for us.
exiles child 