SMOOTH FAN
This simple cup of Red Wing clay –
I thought it might be cracked.
A thick dark zigzag tracked
the rim. Some dragon gone astray?
Quickening lightning, heavy thunder…
power of ice-breaking spring.
The bursting-forth of everything
in moss-green gold & violet splendor.
Or something darker, circuiting its wheel.
Cold-blooded Serpent, shattering
Anansi’s web (her glittering
fishnet, awash with dew)… to steal,
to kill. Ouroboros-pelt of power
peeled from its fountain (O
omnipresent sweet communion
threaded like planetary Venus-flower).
The poet’s voice lurks with the refugees.
Exiled flint mirror, casting back
the shadow of one seamless lack
of liberty, justice – life’s guarantees.
It is a tool, a sharpened raven-knife
polished in Voronezh.
That river-town, at edge
of steppe. O Evening Star, O sister-wife…
The river sways its coppery smooth fan
from forest spring to Okeanos. One
willowy limb of oaken
mast… grounding the flash where it began.
4.29.20
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