A Friend of Order
(poem for the last day of April)
To raise the gentle dead
to tap home the lost in their blind night
of grey flowers, to wake and go walking
blown by the east invisible wind,
least to the hummingbird jar
wide to the mockingbird's wire
in the secret swing of the sickled moon;
this is the place I come to make love
where love makes me in a displaced whisper.
This shadow-speckled earth,
this creaking four-poster of the old gods' altar
stained sheets bloody-red from the sacrifice
but ruffled with stars, padded
with seeds, wrinkled with earthworms
who lie down smiling.
I sprout all my old visions under wet paper--
an order burned new by corpse-candle, an unplanned heist
from the resurrection-man's wagon--
to sing when there is no song,
pull close old lovers' bones
on these greensick hips, unstoned.
~April 2015
Poem 30 for April
posted for
Poetry Gone Wild
The wise and resourceful mind of Magaly G. graciously gives us permission to write about anything we wish on this last day of a long, long month. I have tried to also incorporate an earlier challenge of hers, to write about three things we hoped to accomplish by writing thirty poems in April.
Gratitude to Magritte for the art and title, and to all brave and dear readers and writers who have companioned me on this April journey, one that was harder and better than all the previous five. Many many serious thanks.
Greensickness: a benign type of iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls, marked by a pale yellow-green complexion.
Images: A Friend of Order, 1964, by Rene Magritte
Memory, 1948, by Rene Magritte
Fair Use via wikiart.org