4.29.2020

ice-breaking spring



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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