& so today's illustration (Dove Street):

4

 
A washed-out February light   winter floating away slowly
and the sound of a mourning dove   one   one-one
mingled with elisions of an iron brake   life’s nonsense
and my notes   cars on the road

 
a world gone quiet   in my mind   (preparation
for annunciation)   spring’s in the womb
of sister-dove:  limping slowly on the barren earth
she goes   as if she had a stone in her shoe

 
maybe   a stone fallen from heaven
landed in a camel-canopy   Abram’s otfe
out of Ur for good   across the sandy waste
under the fringed silk   she sits in shadow

 
cooing to the warriors   urging them on   to the end
of their beginnings   all the way to Jordan
or Jerusalem   where they guard the black stone
of the scapegoat   (father, son and   intervening angel)

 
another stone   too heavy for heaven   and buried deep
in your corrupted heart, O   horseman, knight:
love is reason   and reason is love,   she coos
and this equality   brings Jubilee,   she whispers

 
where seven iron rings   circle the sacred city
each ring manacled to its own   unbreakability
(like weapons of mass destruction   guarding
weapons of mass destruction)   from the days of John

 
until now    the Kingdom has come with violence
violent men    take it by force   but it shall not be so
with you   murmurs the fragile   enshrouded bird
(grey wing   buried in grey stone   furled   in black)


         
                                       2.26.04