Decay as creative premise.
Nested in cordgrass, a master work sinks.
The artist smiles over its cracking disappearance.
Rubble is one of my primary interests, she tells us.
She imagines its rearrangement.
I mean, she adds, what might come?
There are good reasons, after all,
––and especially here, to reject nostalgia.
***
The title of this post comes from this installation by American artist Beverly Buchanan, which a recent New York Times article by Siddhartha Mitter describes as a vanishing masterpiece.
Oil of perception.
Before the feast, an anointing,
which is to say I see you
which is to set the table
in hope
that when bread falls
like grain of wheat to soil
we may break
and eat a chorus
of amens.
From the belly of the myth.
When we were there
between the angels
in the dragon’s gaze
the story of our lives
and our moment swelled
in the same sky as ever
except that we knew it
the flesh
of our breath.
Abound.
Overflow, child.
Find the long
looming brim
of this vessel
and sail beyond
now
the high river
of your full.
May she be heard.
No words today. Not mine.
Only this plea, for protection
of the heart and spirit,
will, and strength
of Grace, that her
voice be lifted as
a torch through
this long dark.
It is time.
With winged hero.
Hello, messenger. You are no good at flying but faithful in your attempts.
Pranked again by your devices, you can’t resist the dime store crown, the glitter-wrapped wand to go with it, even as it leaves you short one palm to break the fall. What resistance you have, you spend against gravity.
A study in wreckage, your devotion. There you go again to the height of the last wall in the next fallen fortress, to meet the updraft, that it may lift you backward into the hour at your open hand.
With human.
Hover, ghost of
half animals
and clock plants,
leave these with
me, still with this
thirst, doubting,
still of unknown
orbs packed in
fiber of distress.
Still ugly. All
nervous unrest
promising to the last:
death, I will sleight
your hand first.
Long view from well bottom.
Reminder: you will not be always in this gnawing gut at the center of your terror, and you will laugh again, and love someone who smiles back at you still. Even as you look away now, afraid to push your luck when it comes to what may be saved, you are raised to take less than anyone’s idea of deserving and that face tastes like the last memory you need. To hold that gaze from this deep a vantage for finding still this little light. A want to yell, Go, and keep them in it.
In walking.
It may be the last step,
the bud of you forgetting
to open.
Will you
suggest it by your
form, enduring
this our dark.
Creature
what are you bringing?
as much bird as light
but show me kneeling
how it weeps
the bell of you
over us.
Guardian forms.
Here is your origin: flame
crossing over sky, you
curve from here, from
two lines meeting
at an acute angle
to whisper wings
from these shapes,
nothing but
your parts.
***
Inspired by Paul Klee’s angels.
