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
