poet goes to the movies

TWILIGHT WING

                                  It must be abstract.

The trees grow slowly in the sacred wood,

quietly, unnoticed.

Oscar night I missed.

The little gold-plated crusader stood

on his black pentagon of film

(the royal Real reeled in).

I recall those figures hidden

in moonlit home movies – Requiem

for Camelot – Jackie & Juliet

on the beach in Manchester,

Henry falling off the fence (Her

See-Saw Trap) – traipsing all wet

from Gull Lake (North of Galilee)

– the memory’s a blur.

Something about her –

Mary?  Rose? – abstracted, free...

like a cousin from Cuzco, nested in quipu

with bow & arrow.  This tall

old Norway pine, with her small

sibling cedar... standing close to you,

like a hamlet in Denmark... old foundations

digging down deep, old roots

in raven-dark red deserts,

old Incan knots of sacrifice, old bones.

As if the moss-grey Italian movie

were projected onto two

dimensions – the hollow

curvature of holy lapis lazuli

                   *

a flickering shadow in the sybil’s leaves.

The shadow of a red wing

echoed in a lapsing

thread of golden fleece, or sheaves

in limestone lattice, out of ultramarine –

the scar it sang from the ravine

(Quauhnahuac, Afghanistan)

like Night Sea waves (remote, Martian)

emerging just at early dawn.

Methodical crossweave

of whirling squares... conceive

this integral chart – piñon-spun

vernal thread leaping an orange span.

Maid manifest beyond

this world... my dark fond

twin, eye of Medusa-hurricane...

O double knot-rosette of Providence!

Of Maximus theoria

the illustration – mirror-

W lacing an iron fence

like glinting fleece out of Black Sea –

divine & human being

whispered into seeing

as if east of Eden rose again, to be

grey sheltering twilight wing

of Jonah – shell, whale,

Ocean – bird & sail –

one lambent mauve (living, loving).

 2.27.17