Archaeopteryx, Metempsychosis

Surely the arbitrary cannot be so arbitrary,
determined by chance or caprice?

Archaeopteryx, metempsychosis.
Ancient bird of the Jurassic era,
The transmigration of the soul.
One actual, one abstract.

The half reptile, half bird, one of the earliest flying animals.
A creature living one hundred fifty million years ago,
A creature now dead, now extinct.
Ah, but did you ever really live for many millions of years?

A prototype.
A transitional form beween reptiles and birds.
Jawed teeth & a long lizard tail: feather & wing.
A form between demons & angels, a collage of concepts.

Archaeo-pteryx.
Archaeo-logy, Encyclo-paedia.
Etymology. From the Greek etumologia, ‘the word of the true or real’.
‘Archaeopteryx’. New Latin. ‘Ancient bird’.
We took pteryx from pterux from pteron, the Ancient Greek, up from Eden.
Pterux – ‘bird’, from pteron – ‘feather’, via ‘wing’.
Ah, but did you ever come from feather via wing?

I see the fossilized imprint of your body.
An encyclopaedia encircled, a cycle, a circle, a final stage for your breath.
A footprint on the path of time, your fossil wings visible as feathery lines.
Radiations from your spinal column.
And your feathers radiated out from these.
Ah, but was it ever that feathers grew first on your body?
Did you ever feel your skin feel like feathers, for the feathery very first time?

Feather to wing to bird. Flying as a finer degree of feeling. Metempsychosis.
The passing of a soul into another body or form of existence.
A physics of flying, a metaphysics of dying. Metaphor.
Ah, had you flown on the wing of the flow, thrown by the throw of the dice?

Words form into rhyme, their meanings divined from the signs.
Archaeopteryx, metempsychosis.
Arbitrary existence & an A to XYZ of time.


31-3-06