IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE HAY OUT OF A MAGICAL SCARECROW

IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH THE HAY OUT OF A MAGICAL SCARECROW

In the green room with the hay out of a magical scarecrow,

I’m putting tarpaper on my pyramid like a suspicious eclipse.

Tar and honey on a biscuit that breaks like a stale cartouche.

Swoosh. That’s the wing of a sabre in the saddle. The moon’s

in Pegasus. I didn’t think that was possible. Has my head

come off like a narcissus bud at the end of a golf club?

Am I liberated enough? Or is this still the foodstall?

Gotta stop asking that as if I didn’t know any better.

It doesn’t matter. And I’m happy about that. Peasant King

when I’m not Buddha Pinocchio. Wouldn’t want to hurt

his feelings. He’s a friend of mine. I don’t take him for granted.

But you relate to him as the mood suits you. Ah, Cohen,

you lovely man, he’s flexible as a Zen ventriloquist.

An embarrassment of riches. A motherlode. Mountain gold

gleaming in the fissures of the night like a mended teacup.

Mystic scar tissue. The shining goes dark before it blinds you

into a supercharged photonic significance of covert insight

into the nature of life resonating with everything

like an old guitar humming to itself in a corner of dust

though that has a way of making me feel like the sex life of the Hubble Telescope

in a degenerating orbit. Quick. A candle. A moth. Luna.

What are you willing to die for as a way of life?

PATRICK WHITE