Where murmuration
of birds under dark sky
is often invisible
without obsidian mirror,
a tiny cloud glimmers,
poised to rain a single
poem.
Under Waters
As above
As above
Where murmuration
of birds under dark sky
is often invisible
without obsidian mirror,
a tiny cloud glimmers,
poised to rain a single
poem.
And not a drop
And yet whole worlds
so close, postponed
by colliding logics,
opinions where sight
might be, to common
need. We could not
invent the water,
though some
tried.
Telling home.
When the night does not end by shatter of night, but by sunrise,
and beneath this sun, roots hold, if a son of the land should
find beside him a living daughter and beneath the sun, root
to hold beneath the land of ruins and holding, find water––
and if the water should make it to the lips of a child in time,
the child may yet grow. To tell a story. It will begin: We lived.
And the still living will hear it and be moved. To sing it back,
hands to the sun, We––
Watching for time.
At night we watched the water, but her depths revealed nothing of themselves, all reflection and tides and unknowns. But once we looked and like a jumping fish it showed itself. We gasped to see Time. You! We almost said, but he was gone again.
What could we do with that? Dark and cold, she would neither be caressed nor worshipped, features afforded by our creatures, mountains, monuments. The mirror of her, looking back, knew us, and she held what we had meant to catch.
It was hard to face, our faces. We went back to carving our names. We carved them in stones that looked solid enough to hold them. To last, as the saying went, the test.
What test? We wondered, and the answer was Time. But time was submerged again, and the sea, seeming to see us, had always been more than we could take in. Now it was more still, and rising.