WHEN THE BLUE DOVE TURNS BACK

WHEN THE BLUE DOVE TURNS BACK

When the blue dove turns back,

exhausted by looking for things

she hoped to find,

blue blood to the dark side of the heart,

no land in sight, no blithe word,

no sprig of olive in her beak,

and the bruised sky turns black

and there’s nothing to seek

but the misdirections of the stars,

she looks for shelter

under the wing of the dragon

that takes her into his darkness

like the night takes in the moon.

Just for her he disarms

the claws on one wing and a prayer

like a dead branch to receive her blossom.

She thaws like snow in the heat

of his ancient serpent fire

and weeps like a window

for things that go on forever.

Like the homeless continuity

of her random flight plan.

He speaks to her tenderly

like silence out of the enormity

of his solitude within

as if she were standing

in the shadows of opening doors.

No lover, no assassin, no eclipse,

no starmap to anywhere,

not a sage of snake wisdom,

his yellow eyes slashed like full moons,

he says, you’ve got wings, just like me

and maybe it’s not landfall you’re looking for

not something continental

to rest upon like a mountaintop

but the wind, whichever way it blows,

wherever it goes

that is always vagrantly at home

and everywhere in touch with itself.

Just as the night sea never

severs itself from its own weather

whatever mirror it wears

with or without a facelift,

you might think you’re so far out of it

you’re flying a kite on string theory,

a high note on a stave of power lines.

But what are these if not

your own umbilical and spinal cords

attached like wavelengths and lifelines

to everything in the womb of the dark mother

who keeps on giving birth to you

from one bucket of a waterclock

to the next forever?

And when you’re lost in your own eyes,

is the night not compassionate,

does it not lay out a starmap before you

and say go whichever way you want,

follow whatever star you choose.

In an omnidirectional world of light

they’re all true north

even when you’re walking

in the shadows of your own shining.

Even when you’re trying to reach landfall

by cooking rocks in a tinfoil crack spoon

like the feminine gender of Columbus

in the Caribbean islands

when you break up

like Pangaea into continents

as if you were fracturing prophetic skulls

that didn’t take their own advice,

hoping someone might name one after you.

And I can think of a few

that could be immediately renamed after you

though you’re not the first

nor the last to discover them.

Mu and Atlantis.

But they’re not the kind of place

you want to pilot an ark to.

And if you think it’s hard now

try tugging a shipwreck up from the bottom

to see if even one of a kind survived.

There you can eat the carrion of corpses

like the white crow

Noah sent out first

to look for dry land

then cursed the bird

for feeding off the drowned

with a hoarse voice

and an eclipse of black feathers,

turning diamond back into coal

you can cook in a spoon

like forty nights of new moons

that never open their eyes

because they’re as stillborn

as the porcelain doorknob

of a cosmic egg

you can only break out of

on the inside

by letting the world

unfold your wingspan

like a loveletter to yourself

you finally decide to send back like word

of a blue dove at peace with herself

at the first sight of real land

even from the crow’s nest

you’re living in now

from hand to mouth.

PATRICK WHITE