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
