Song for a Spring Day

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.