Crossed by the black cat
I must sing the daemonic hymn
three times backwards
three times forwards
and never sideways.
In the backdrop of silence,
the hawk’s cry means terror,
the revolving winds,
the evolving landscape,
the word of God is never in error.
I drink sap from the bucket
and suck tobacco juice in the thicket,
hidden by nettles, precarious
in the mud.
Paramacular distraction:
the butterfly, blue bishop
tantamount to his creed.
The white magnolias,
the winged maple seeds,
the truculent bee stings,
hearing hymnals sung,
seeing buds sprung
from the equinoctial trees.
Wind chimes and hawk-dives,
hawk-cries and sunshine,
the poet’s sensitive eyes
glazed with shadowy gossamer,
reluctantly relaying light,
photons to his occipital lobe,
awakening dreams and dormant ideas.
First light of spring,
rite of Oberon and Titania,
all hail the fairy king and queen.
Three birds sing—
two for one,
one for both,
each for hope,
Love’s candid note.
Daffodils dying,
tulips rising.
The poet sleeps
on meadow grasses,
words for pillows—
slapdash sleep and
slapdash dreams,
hearkening to a slapdash love
that came and went
with the slapdash breeze.
To where lust meets longing,
in love’s inner sanctum,
fate and fate alone
holds the key.
Ah, but the sap, it makes one
crazy. Home! To home!
Where milk and honey wait
and lavender baths and wine
and bread await, where the bed
awaits and being lazy.
Books! Shards of diaphanous glass,
words like hooks for the mind to grasp,
reeled into worlds of untenable splendor,
such pleasures that can never last.
Afternoons, long afternoons, be longer!
Night comes and reminds us
of the great hereafter.
At close of day, by firelight, we sing.
Call in the poet! Let his voice take wing!
The trammeled man, sullen and pensive,
comes in. He lifts his voice, out of freedom
formed and duty-delivered, keeping the shadows
at bay and making our bodies quiver.
His voice guides us through strange and
mysterious worlds. We hang on his every word
as if they were linnets’ wings,
as if to miss one would mean falling from its skies
down, down, for eternity.
For the trajectory to Hell begins with a single slip,
and the ascent to Heaven requires patience
and diligence.
