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It longs for the
spine-shudder
coming with an October persimmon
sucked clear to the seed.
Legs,
thighs wound together in bed
mean everything to it.
It craves pipe and whistle
music played in neon reflections
on night rivers, seeks cello sounds
inside tangled sycamore shadows
at dusk. It falls in with the confusion
of waxwings and red ash disappearing
and emerging together in shifting
self-definitions of their own making.
The poverty of its isolation
is the royal totality of a crow
heard once at dawn calling
across the horizon.
Its first five ways are the first
five fragrances of bog and booth
willow, beaked sedge, blue clover,
blue grasses, encountered in the first
thaw of spring. The ten directions
of its faith are its two hands spread
before a blue-yellow flame burning
in the snow. The ways of its passion
are all the directions revealed by wet,
white needles in a pine forest
straining through river fog.
It perceives the core of its name
as a wheel held by the hands, turned
full circle one way, then the other,
the range of its dominion as a wheel
spinning water, a rattling mill
wheeling wind, prophecy spinning
a fate, earth spinning the wheeling
properties of night.
Its most jolting connection to God
is headfirst off rocks down
into the pummeling pressure and sudden
suffocation of a cold surf.
Its most complete connection to God
are its naked feet cradled and kissed
by the most loved of lovers.
And when the voice of the one
lover is at its ear whispering
devotion and possession, telling
truthfully of such fictions, the soul
then believes with all of its body
in its own immortality. |
Copyright @1997 Pattiann Rogers |
