SAFETY LINES
The late-May lilacs are long gone
but light grey limbs
& the green leaves rim
the grass with shade yet, absent one.
The sound of an ocean softly seething
in the branches overhead.
Is she alive or dead –
my sainted, tainted Juliet? Still breathing
somewhere? Imago or Imogen...
merely some ghoulish Ravlin-
Gouldash revenant, then?
Some Beatrice-crystal-Poe routine,
arising ghastly from dank ditch-ravine?
But no... a memory
lifts all azury
from sparkle-spray beneath benign
leap of wide Golden Gate. Almond-
eyed sprite, a-whirl
like spinning Jenny Gyre
balanced on catenary wire... light bond
that ravels tout le monde... infinite
undisplaceable safety net
& cloudy calumet
confirming universal concord... so be it!
Grave knot that tightens less & less
toward infinite regress
of infinitesimal kiss
(minute atomic balm of tenderness
*
merging without mixture or separateness).
Maximus once limned it thus,
the monk who bore witness
(with loss of limb) for concept Orthodox –
incarnate knot of human & divine,
united unlikeness – like
that tomb slab, a limestone block
marked by what seems a breaking line
but only seems; the two are one
in one Person, of three
in all; still guarantee
amid the waltz of turning sun & moon
of Love’s immoveable eternity.
Out of deep matrix
of Ocean – intergalactic
scheme of merry stars in that sea...
inconceivable conception of
all origins (harmonic
correlations, thick
with measureless & dancing life).
The Manitou all people know,
Aquinas wrote. The God
who dreamed this serenade...
we meet you in the shady slough
beneath great knots of wild grapevines
beside the muddy Jordan –
down by where solitary John
once cast a seine for Jonah (safety lines).
7.11.18
