B H Fairchild

Here you will find the Poem Motion Sickness of poet B H Fairchild

Motion Sickness

I am tired of the heave and swell,
 the deep lunge in the belly, the gut's
 dumb show of dance and counterdance,
 sway and pause, the pure jig of nausea
 in the pit of a spinning world.
 Where the body moves, the mind
 often lags, clutching deck, anchor,
 the gray strap that hangs like the beard
 of death from the train's ceiling,
 the mind lost in the slow bulge
 of ocean under the moon's long pull
 or the endless coil of some medieval
 argument for the existence of God
 or the dream of the giant maze
 that turns constantly in and in
 on itself and there is no way out . . . 
 I am sick and tired of every rise and fall
 of the sun, the moon's tedious cycle
 that sucks blood from the thighs of women
 and turns teenage boys into wolves
 prowling the streets, hungry for motion.
 Let me be still, let me rest
 in some hollow of space and time
 far from the seasons and that boring,
 ponderous drama of day and night.
 Let me sleep in the heart of calm
 and dream placidly of birds frozen
 in the unmoving air of eternity
 and the earth grown immobile
 in its centrifugal spin, and God
 motionless as Lazarus in his tomb
 before he is raised dizzily
 to fall again, to rise, to fall.