A metaphor of white

A white river flows south;
the ivory menagerie stampedes down the glimmering slippery rocks.
The music of their parade is like the plucking of violin strings,
beckoning to passersby with its
symphony of forgotten waltzes and mockingbird songs
to sit on the coarse shore and gaze into a blank reflection.
White truths
and white lies
run, en masse, out of their Tower of Babel
and pool in an incandescent room of sunflower thoughts,
some wilting, their great heads collapsing onto frail chests,
others reflecting the bright cleanliness of a lucid memory:
a white sailboat on a green sea
the size of clouds versus a small dark house in a polka-dotted meadow,
a meadow bright with glowing stars in the pale afternoon,
their auras so white they burn black
when eclipsed by shades of the present -
ghosts, haunting my veiled nirvana.
Beyond that spirit’s shoulder, in the Japanese-animation sky,
I saw four red birds fly in four different directions
one flew east, one flew west,
one stayed in its nest, dreaming;
the other flew blindly into a land of no norths.

A mighty river flows south,
into a disturbingly beautiful wasteland.
It beckons at passersby to sit upon its banks
and paint its waters white with vivid memories.