Little Vision of the Great Intangible
Some vowels disappear
some arc across lines of poetry
black etched ravens that have lately been cawing, cawing,
their wings are consonants, or would be.
In the hardness scale, there is no measure for my heart.
Neither talc, or ruby.
Streak across me, as lightning in the canyon sky.
Leave marks; tattoo divine on my skin.
Ink me into rain.
Say my name, and I call you into flame,
my secret treasure, my astral tango.
I go to petals, fragrant, the finality of garden in October
Burnt umber, Sienna, wild thistle and mourning dove.
It’s the puzzle we solve by putting the box away.
I am porous, you are crazy weather, fallen apples, the chokecherries gotten entirely by jays, mullein stalk gone to pillar and seed, the fallen parts of the wisteria I sweep at my doorway each morning,
what wakes me to startle, redwing and cirrus.
You arrive in my afternoon, a pot of tea already brewing, hot on the hot stovetop, coals in the grate, bread in the oven, past ferment, into seize and risen.
Golden, sesamed, open that lid – you have the words –
the scent of welcome is over us, a Giotto nimbus, the smoke after the train leaves Finlandia station, a revolution in the air.
None will be left behind this time, gather us all, all into peace, for once,
you can, you can.
Whatever happens to us
is in the capable hands of the maple’s scarlet leaves.
Whatever you do next,
is how the peach tree will remember us.
Published in Dazzling Wobble, FutureCycle Press, 2013, Mineral Bluff, Georgia
