THE WEBS

The webs I could once brush off my shoulders

as lightly as the hair of an old romance

that’s been sitting in the closet for years

are beginning to feel like rigging and ropes

and I’m at sea again under full sail.

No more enzymes fossilizing my mind and heart

like the La Brea Tar Pits.

You can’t get a tattoo of the sun

and not expect the occasional eclipse

but there are seagulls in my wake again

and dolphins at my prow.

I’m as omnidirectionally bound to everywhere at once

as any star

so no more trying to figure out where I’m going

by making constellations out of matchsticks

that enlighten me about as much

as the myths of black dwarfs.

And as much as I love the fireflies

they’re just going to have to work with the lies

I told them

to get them to start believing in themselves

and shine like galaxies.

I don’t know how I know this is so

but somehow I do.

It’s as if the future placed its hands on my skull

and my eyes have returned to me

like birds to nests that haven’t felt the weight

of a cosmic egg in light years

like spring skies with the silhouettes

of Canada geese

flapping their wings like eyelashes

against the full moon

as if it were flirting with the idea

of driving me mad again

just to see if it still could.

Of course you can.

And you’ve known it forever.

I bring the atmosphere

and you’re the weather.

I’m the genius in residence at a school of one

and you’re the muse that knows it all.

This isn’t midwinter spring

and I’m not sodden

nor sempiternal toward sundown.

My heart isn’t turning urns out

on a planetary potting wheel

to accommodate the ashes of a phoenix

that doesn’t know how else to pass the time

among so many dead things.

I see iridescent green fire.

Mystic orange-blue oxymorons and koans of colour

flaring like butterflies over flowers in flame

that open like third eyes

that would put peacocks to shame.

I bring the radiant intensities

and you

even more profoundly

bring the veils.

And together we make one mystery

like angel-fleets

with skulls and crossbones on their sails.

Hoofs and haloes.

Lunar horns

with the blood of roses on them

and sacred dolls

with thorns driven through their hearts

to wound their rapture

with seraphic spears of dark insight

that elude even the subtlest of seers

like the shadows cast by mirrors.

You cross a curse with a blessing

and the union is an expression of love

that doesn’t differentiate between pain and pleasure

or look upon fullness as half.

And it delights in the crazy hurtful crucial wisdom

that enlightenment leaves in its wake

like an afterlife of cool bliss

that can prophecy in a coma

when the next comet’s going to hit earth

like a species change

that has nothing to do with the judgment of God

any more than inspiration

clings to a lightning rod in a storm.

I bring the sound of one hand clapping

and you bring the encore.

I bring the medicine bag

and you bring the emergency ward.

I need a break from myself.

I want to turn a blind eye for a while

on the hurricane raging around me

and you look like club med

run by a Mexican drug cartel from here.

But my biggest fear

is that you’re not dangerous enough

to never have to prove your power.

My deepest wish

is that I’m still dark enough

to bring the stars out in your eyes

like a mix of tears and laughter

when I tell you

that when God took a rib from Adam

he didn’t know whether he should use it

for a rafter in a lighthouse on the sun

or the keel of a lifeboat

that’s tipped over on the moon.

So he split the difference

between the two of us

like a wishbone

and no one’s ever known

what to ask for ever since

but you get yours

and I get mine

and we both shine

a wavelength or two shy of a spectrum.

I’ll bring the eclipse

and you bring the rainbows.

In the eleven dimensions

of the inner and outer illusions

that currently pass for reality

I’ll bring the ten for space

and you bring the one for time.

PATRICK WHITE