Tuesday, November 12, 2013

THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE TREES AT THEIR PODIUM

THIN LOAM ON THE FOREST FLOOR OF THE TREES AT THEIR PODIUM

Thin loam on the forest floor of the trees at their podium.
And the leaves flying around like lecture notes
and regatas of sulphur butterflies. Sorry about that.
I didn’t mean to be so wise. This is skin and starmud not bone.
It hurts when you touch it like that with a compass needle
and a blood transfusion for alley cats in heat
that want to get outside and look at the stars for themselves.
Meow. It ain’t me, babe. I’m not worth looking for
anymore. But I want you to take the window with you when you go.
Go. My name is Chernobyl. Fukushima mud pies
with a happy face that never smiles these days.

Not much anyway until I say something sweet
about being handcuffed by the rain like the tree rings
in your heartwood. I can tell the time by them. It’s late.
And there’s a blue hinge on the sky that makes it look
like the lapwing of a gate that’s lain in the vetch
a long, long time. Like a cry that nobody heard for help.
What can you say to the street lights as they’re coming on?
It’s open and private all at the same time?
The hayrake in the grass you spilled paint on
like a comb with a Jew’s harp made out of a thin skeleton?
Look at the tail on that one. A chandelier for rats
with skin problems you don’t want to hear about
before lunch as if lunch were some kind of dinner.

Eat. It helps the pills go down better like little gravestones.
Pebbles in a wishing well. What did you wish for?
I’m afraid of mine like a butcher’s wife with three blind mice
on drugs. Pulmonary esophogeal biopsy. The big man.
The Wizard of Oz in a ministerial parachute. OK
we’ll listen to that too as if there wasn’t anything left to say
but thank-you. I just met an oracle I can relate to.

Hope so. We’ll have to wait and see who takes me by the hand
at the crosswalk. Without a traffic light looking for
a manger like a prophetic fledgling. Or a baby lapwing
that plays on a Jew’s harp like the skeleton of a snake
or the rain plucking at the plectra of the heart
in cosmic water droplets and morphine drips. Tick tock.
We’re back to waterclocks fused to improvised explosive devices.


PATRICK WHITE

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