Passage Via Storm
I.
The slow night borrowed the clouds
to hide the dogwood moon
from the hard campaign that Spring
has brought to my country,
her lightning spear, her
cumulus shield, breaker of brick,
hater of walls, knowing only battle
to make the blood winter-frozen
flow again.
The day stays back from
her junkyard growl, the leaves
turn inside out
to make this grey hour
castaway between dark and light,
to let me unbottle you here once more
where there's only clear sight
where life's gone past touch and guess.
So I say a few words soft as quicksilver
to startle out under the thunder,
fold these origami birds to fly
into my only answer, the storm
of both life and nothing;
life in the rain,
death in the wind.
II.
There was a time when
this was your time
when the place I opened for you
would flow you to me, low pressure
along the dry line, where these words
these birds blew out as the shell-broke
cage opened up on moonmad night,
on the honeysuckle dance in our
silver skins, on the peace that comes
to those who look for nothing.
All those nights the light
we made was moveable,
taken into the darkness
on the wicks of our eyes
blue-bright in the empty black.
But the flint-strike spark
of mind on heart, the paper lips
that ask for no other answer,
the jasmine smoke burning
through the storm---that wasn't
enough show for you
and you passed on, not one
of the tribe that sees
how everything can belong
to nothing, even when
nothing is left.
~April 2014
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Open Link Monday
Image: Landscape in Storm, chalk study, 1885, by Vincent Van Gogh
Public domain via wikipaintings.org
