I CAN FEEL MY PHYSICAL ENERGIES TWEAKING THE WORDS

I CAN FEEL MY PHYSICAL ENERGIES TWEAKING THE WORDS

I can feel my physical energies tweaking the words

like birds and dragons waking up, my voice

a hive of dopey bees, my eyes, a hangover of stars.

My heart is syncopating its keyboard

to a flash of rhythm riffing like sunlight

on the waves of the lake exorcising its ghosts

as the waterbirds emerge out of the fog

like low flying lovers looking for their reflections

as a place to land. Have you ever noticed

when birds are swimming in a mirror

they always make a bow out of a fletched arrow

with an S curve in their necks as if

there were an unseen archer over the next hill,

target, arrow, bow and flightpath in a musical unison

of migrating violins from further up north

who stayed to winter here where it’s mild by comparison?

This is the magic, and the mystery, the exuberance

and the joy, the black ecstasy of the blood

deepening its own enlightenment shedding its cowls

for a carillon of bells that sound like hollyhocks

with something to celebrate, though it isn’t necessary

to know what it is. The fountains come and go

like dolphins coming up from the depths,

breaching the surface of life to breathe again.

The eclipses have come off like the hoods of falcons

I trained like words to sit on my wrist to show the doves

how to write a more intriguing loveletter

with a little blood on it like the seal of what you meant.

I set them free for good to write what they want.

My mind is trying to create a cosmos out of

an inchoate windfall of bliss that’s slowly

beginning to cover the planet in an atmosphere

that supports life symbiotically as if every note

of its resonating leitmotif had to be heard

like a hummingbird in a thematic context of larkspur.

I don’t need to understand myself. What fool

goes looking for the sun with a starmap?

I elaborate the light like an astrolabial star catcher

that doesn’t care where this is. I’m not

echo-sounding this radiant mantra of a shipwreck

for lost treasure I can haul up from the bottom

of a wishing well. I’m living the aftermath of a dream

that whispered the Pleiades into my ear last night

as if the night were pouring its heart out into a shell

the way every river is gathered up by the sea

like a suggestive line of poetry flowing

like serpent fire up the lunar thread of my spine.

My spirit’s mining diamonds in the eyes of shepherd moons.

I love to watch them thaw like tears in the heat of the heart

once it’s fired up like the urns of the ashes of the stars

in the furnace of a black hole glowing again like a halo

collaboratively shaped out of billions of transformations

going on under my eyelids like distant hills on the horizon.

My unattainable singularity is counterpointing the light

in a way that enhances it like neuronic roots of black matter.

This is the joy of a death in life experience

that doesn’t leave death on the outside looking in.

This is the rapture of life in the midst of death

waking up on both sides of the same threshold

like a bride being carried forth after she’s been carried away.

With every breath, I lift a veil, and millions of eyes are revealed

like the dew and the stars and the fireflies

that cling to me like a single blade of grass.

I am summoned like the fragrance of a black rose

to the strange beauty at a seance of the evanescence

like a childhood song it made up lightyears ago

full of the joy that ripens the sad apples of our sorrows

into a compassion for everything that must perish

to go on living in a universe that doesn’t forget a thing.

Where memories don’t grow old, and the prophecies

of our ancestral skulls are anticipating us

in the available dimensions of the future

wondering if we’ve changed much since

they first conceived of us arriving out of the blue

like the transmigration of souls in the bodies of Canada geese

rising awkwardly from the leftover harvest of cattle corn

brittle in the frosty moonlight of those

who are about to be born again like the Milky Way

shining like a patina of stars on its own ashes.

I carry on like the light on a long journey

exploring the history of the future like a nightwatchman

opening the gate of the lantern he’s just blown out

to trade his candle in for the dawn, releasing these words

I set free from the opening aviary of my voice like birds

life multiplies like my joy in being alive well beyond necessity.

PATRICK WHITE