Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Evening with Variations

The grim reaper weeds our backyard garden
And my spirit guide says it takes lifetimes
To understand Art Blakey's drums.
It is October,
Where every shiver is music
And all chords are dissonant,
For that's what angels like, it turns out,
And the old ones who linger here
Remind you that that's what you like too
Or used to, when there was no space between worlds
And you picked flowers freely from the skull —
There was no Bach to guard the unmarked gates.

Black and white the limbs, the webs, the skeletons,
Seeing with only wisdom, in only outline,
Beyond experience, outside of mind,
That certain clarity
In the visible air
That will no longer be there
When the veil rolls back in like fog
To leave only shadow and your theoretical beacon
Like a wand, craftsman of air.
The sundial is turning,
How much healing can you bear
Before drowning?

The woodsmoke is far away
But the vapor's inside you now,
Emptying out what you never were 
With its whisper "The illusion."
The guitar plays itself
With pale, thin hands.
Its memories are not your own
But they become their final offering,
As some consummate summation
Of the light you used to be
When only feeling ...
What calls out still
In the things that can only be known
By looking in the cat's eyes,
The wild blueberries,
The waverings of gossamer across
The eaves and pylons of your world.

The costumes you once wore
Revealed your ambiguity,
As the lights enhanced the darkness,
And the colonnades you shadowed
Were doorways
To what was known already,
Despite the ancient hand depositing
A hundred thousand dollar bar
And the strangers from another town
Who just moved in, too soon to know
You were a wren, a goddess who could
Release the bones and transform
From a craftsman to a witch of fire,
In black sun reborn, as chrysalis mummy,
The landscape now washed clean
In a skull of stars.