Four new poems for mid-March

 

 

 

Aby’s Sylph Comes and Goes

 

She glides in and out of the busy streets and stalls,

A basket on her head, her gown blown by the wind,

And here she is now hastening through halls

Of some aristocratic home, where ladies pinned

To the background, with their escorts stuck on the walls,

As all were paintings of one dimension, or skinned

To nothing, not even bones or muscles; no balls

Or banquets possible for them—until she spins

Around like a top, in between their shadows,

So little puffs of air give movement to their flounces,

And they flip and flop like paper dolls, until she goes

Out by the backdoor, and they fall flat as she bounces

Back into the hidden world we live in, our noses

Unoffended by the stench of inequality,

Thankful for the moment’s grace in our wee city.

 

 

Mourners Inside the Megalithic Tomb

 

We put together all our best tools

And weapons, gather ornaments, and things

We like to touch on long cold winter nights

When we are away on hunts, and when our souls

Feel lonely and the sky rains down its stars. The rings

We traded for and the crystal blades from fights

Against the demons in our sleep, and what

It is that makes us sick and age and disappear,

All these, too, we put in a circle, the hot

Fire within, the cold shadows without,

And stand together, women, children, tears

In our eyes and try to remember all the years

We sang our songs and danced with him now dead,

At one with ancestors and spirits. The dread

Is gone so long as we can remember what

Has never been in only one, the all-

Encompassing, compressed individual.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Feathered Tribes

 

There are fantails twerking on the edge of the fountain

and spotted doves dancing a gavotte on the grass,

while black birds twitter to one another and look insane

as they bounce about, head to head, arse to arse.

The sparrows come, dozens of them now, they have learned

To grab the bits of bread and fly back to their nests,

As clever as feathery rats on the lawn, who yearned

For each other, and there are now outliers who rest

Alone waiting their turn, then the obese thrush

Stare at one another. unsure if the season is right,

And would stay there motionless until it was almost night

Then peck a few seeds and return home all in a rush.

A few nervous visitors, indeterminate, stand in a bush

Near the door to pounce on kitchen scraps at sight.

 

 

 

 

 

Prayer Nuts

 

Thirty years in the making, the prayer nut

Can be opened to inspection, layer upon layer,

Levels of consciousness and reality, but

Nothing can be seen without a magnifier

Of some sort, the pins that hold it all together,

The windows to be pierced, each level

Finer than the previous scenario, a button

On a sleeve with microscopic letters, fetters

From loose threads of a poor woman’s shawl.

What tools they used to carve, a lathe, an awl,

A tiny saw much smaller than a hair,

A rasp too tiny to be grasped. This space

Is sacred, this place more holy than a face

Of someone staring into heaven. Share

Of the beholder to fill the mysteries, where crawl

And creep the longing souls of weeping sinners

In some abject ritual of trust,

There are the insects caught where the spinners

Never dared to come, turning into dust.