The Music Of Birds And Lions

 

 

 

The Music of Birds and Lions

If I had to say something about it

I would just mention

the way your eyes

moved through me
like fever through a lion,

like the brown-soled boots

 

of a Victorian explorer

walking lightly

with ownership, a dominion

powered by steam

careful always to
keep an echo-

map of the outback

in beige buckram binding

firmly gripped in your mind,

 

referencing pages dogeared

recording the reasons

not to fall behind on

a dangerous journey;

or that your hands

were always sliding in

a slipstream of tasks, were

water, embracing stones smooth

in their blue satin beds,

leaving behind a geologic

 

Alexandrian library

of lithic messages, codes

in languages of a few extinct

species of birds, envoys and diplomats;

that your long fingers on the stops

were your flight feathers,

playing a recital at nightfall

of calling macaws that come to color

the shadow-fronds of sunset palms

with their bright rest;

 

but there's no need to

talk about what you stored
under my skin, or tattoos in birdsong

that can't be forgotten,

so I only strum the music of it

where the lions rise

in the mauve gauze of
the jungle dark.

~December 2014

(minor revisions, 2022)

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend #144

(Nothing bubbling up from the cauldron this week, so posting another oldie, one originally written for Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads)

Images: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

The Moment of Truth, 1892, Paul Gauguin

Public domain

The Music of Birds and Lions

The Music of Birds and Lions

If I had to say something about it

I would just mention

the way your eyes

moved through me
like fever through a lion,

like the brown-soled boots

of a Victorian explorer

walking lightly

with ownership, a dominion

powered by steam

careful to always
keep an echo

map of the outback

in beige buckram binding

firmly gripped in your mind,

referencing page dogeared,

recording the reasons

not to fall behind on

a dangerous journey;

or that your hands

were always sliding in

a slipstream of tasks, were

water, embracing stones smooth

in their blue satin beds,

leaving behind a geologic

Alexandrian library

of lithic messages, codes;

languages of a few extinct

species of birds, envoys and diplomats;

that your long fingers on the stops

were your flight feathers,

playing a recital of calling macaws

that come at nightfall to color

shadow-fronds of sunset palms

with their rest;

but there's no need to

talk about what you stored
under my skin, or tattoos in birdsong

that can't be forgotten

so I only strum the music of it

where the lions rise

in the mauve gauze of
the jungle dark.

~December 2014

posted for    real toads

The last Get Listed for 2014

Process note: I wrote this earlier in the month, when I was undrugged, and it already had several of Michael's words embedded in it. I put a few more in today as I tweaked it, using

 in one form or another music, few, grip, feather, steam, embrace, rise, fall, water, shadow, bed. 

Images: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

The Moment of Truth, 1892, Paul Gauguin

Public domain via wikiart.org