EVEN IN THE DIRT, THE FRANGIBLE SHINING

EVEN IN THE DIRT, THE FRANGIBLE SHINING

Even in the dirt, the frangible shining,

the radiant silt, the lumens and the pollen

of starmud mirrors, whole galaxies in the dust

of an enlightened road going nowhere

with me on it, past the beaverpond

the road superintendent’s daughter

used to grow dope by she and the deer

and the rabbits ate, and the moon, you

couldn’t evade believing it, bloomed

like a waterlily on a lake with a no trespassing sign

as if you weren’t allowed to see Diana bathing

or how she renewed her mismanaged virginity.

No alibi in the mouth of anyone’s innocence,

out here in the woods people talk

along parallel partylines that never meet

even in the aerial distance of long distance calls

like hermit thrushes in the hills at night

but they don’t insult each other by asking

for each other’s forgiveness as if they couldn’t

manage that for themselves. Blood of the lamb

on the glacial rocks of the coydogs and doyotes.

Shepherds don’t last too long without wolf’s clothing.

Three bush cords of crosses in the swamp

make a cubic Kaaba of heartwood with

cracked tree rings like the haloes of wet springs

and now they’re ready for the fire and after that

once the mosquitoes have thawed out of their comas

beside the stove where the cats are laid out,

I’ve seen it for myself, Orion in the ashes and sackcloth

of late February when the ice age begins to melt

that gouged the eyes of the lakes out

so however deeply you looked into them,

there was nothing but tears in a mirror

that would put most telescopes to shame.

I’m alone on this road, and that’s ok too,

with the seven ghosts of the motorists it’s killed

for taking it for granted like wild curves

that ended in granite wailing walls where the swallows

tuck sacred notes of overly sincere grafitti spraybombs

into the caesuras of life that gape in amazement

at how easily death can overwhelm the feelings

of local highschools with a labyrinth

of cosmic sorrows they’ll wander in forever

like the waves on Wolf Lake where their friends died.

And don’t mistake me. I don’t mean to make light of this.

I was there. The darkness befell us all.

Like an abandoned snake house on a hill

in a clearing of the abyss nobody’s been near for years.

No end of the world out here, where nature’s

got its own sense of timing, and there’s more love

in the autumn than there is in the spring

when even the most vital pathways through life

are impassably disenchanting to the locals

who gravel and grade them like glaciers

the visionary potholes in the prophetic skulls of the lakes.

I’ll stay out here for the night and adjust to the darkness

like a berry of blood the mosquitoes can help themselves to

like a bloodbank while I sketch the starmaps

in the eyes of the lake for my solitude to follow

when it’s got a mind to look for itself

like the spaced out spiritual life of someone

who’s indelibly lost in the world like a poet

in a lighthouse of words he never heeds the warning of

to enter the dangerous silence of never listening to himself

to hear what the fireflies are whispering to the stars

about all the secrets I’ve been keeping from myself for lightyears.

PATRICK WHITE