to restore a soul

SECRET WORLD

To restore a soul, to mend a broken heart

out of the wells of memory

for relief of misery

for your grace we pray.  A crane bone flute

keening her lonely call might still redeem

the wind that carries it

on the storm-clouds.  Fiat

lux – though the darkness loom.

This primitive wooden Vierge Ouvrante

unveils her secret world

with a copper hinge.  Old

masters of le Verbe significant

carved, flickered into form

a buoyant microcosm

within her oaken beam –

a human shelter from the storm.

Cicadas buzz amid burnt branches

of a poem framing history.

It is a mystery.

Isis on her throne, Ariadne’s hunches,

spider-Minotaur in his plangent web...

the sacrifice of innocence

behind a screen (some dense

thicket of Pig’s Eye Social Club).

The wind is clear & clean tonight.

Whole homesteads rise

toward ordinary Paradise,

warm lips forging a female Paraclete.

1.16.19