OFF INTO THE MORNING

OFF INTO THE MORNING

Off into the morning like a bird with insomnia

that sings its choral part in the tree as it sleepwalks

into the dawn not knowing if it’s the beginning of a new day

or the end of a dream it was having about flying away

forever forever forever free as a shadow on a cloud

before it ruins the radiance of the dawn shining in its blood.

Blood Drop. Cardinal? You push the limits of scarlet

way over into the infrared redshifting into a total black out

during a saturated firestorm of British Lancasters

over Hamburg trying to sow the whirlwind with incendiaries.

For a little flag you go way too far with the banner oriflamme

of dragon fire heating up the furnaces of your heart

with prophets and art and burnished gold as white

as the eyes of the diamonds looking out from the coals

with tears in their eyes they’re so happy to see you

so clear and adamantinely insistent upon staying fluid as tears.

I waited three years once looking out my studio window

in winter at the slim lone candelabra of a tree with a bird feeder

as I painted for you to come to the candle and assume

your proper place as the flame. Even wrote

a ten page poem about it. The Writing Lesson.

How to take a little spark like you and start a forest fire

with someone who’s distantly related to the stars

and the chimney sparks in a high wind that keep flaring

incendiarily against the pines as if they were lashing them

with whips of fire with stars for barbs like the rainmaker Pleiades

at the end of it all. Star shower. Phosphorus power. Cocked spur.

The ability to shine underwater as if you were burning

it was that hot and you had nothing to cool off your blue stars with

like Fukushima trying not to kill the fish or evacuate Tokyo

or curtail the tinny blue fish tin business on the west coast

with laving tides of radiation to counteract the filth

of having tumours to contend with when all you want to do

is fly off into the morning with an intense infernal glee

your shadow comet and you are immensely free.

PATRICK WHITE