Friday, December 2, 2011

FULL MOON BEHIND THE BROKEN FEMUR OF A JACK PINE

FULL MOON BEHIND THE BROKEN FEMUR OF A JACK PINE

Full moon behind the broken femur of a jack pine

shattered by the wind on the ridge of the hill,

its pagoda of boughs, nothing but a lean-to now

for deer mice, fox, rabbit, groundhogs.

Old manuscripts of rock striated and stacked

by retreating glaciers

washing their hands of themselves.

The hill has never known a messiah

and the glaciers wrote for themselves.

The mast of the moon boat wrecked,

The rectal stake of Vlad the Impaler.

The axis of the world for the auto de fe

of some future heretic

with a penchant for the tragic.

No culpability in the event.

Hawk with an injured wing,

molar, stalagmite, Cinderella

sweeping up the pieces of a broken chandelier

so she won’t cut her feet on the stars.

This tree talked to God.

This tree broke like an arrow

to make a truce with the wind.

Detonations of juniper and red ground willow,

splashes of tears and blood

going off like improvised explosive devices

in a mine-field covered in snow.

This tree was caught in a war-zone.

This tree is trying to flag a fighter back on deck.

This tree sailed out and met the French at Trafalgar.

This tree is a seasoned cannoneer

without a leg to stand on.

This tree is the capital A of a sacred alphabet.

The moon rises and shrinks from apricot

to blue-white toward zenith

and somehow metaphors

run off the back of the silence here

like water off a water bird

as a fractured pine

puts its finger up to my lips

and says shhhhhhh

there’s nothing that can be said

that’s going to make me whole again.

It’s not me that you’re trying to mend.

The wind shudders

with a bleak chill it doesn’t recognize

like a power surge up its spine

as a cult of bats sweep the air helter skelter

like lunar butterflies with teeth.

The brutal clarity of broken things in the wild,

beautiful beyond compare

with anyone’s reflexive remedies,

a wound more sublime

than the whole and the healed

among these groves that surround the hill

like devotees at Stonehenge

pouring blood libations

over the dolmen of a Druid

talking in tree language to the full moon

about things that haven’t happened yet

and the things that have.

PATRICK WHITE

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