CODE
I’M SPEAKING TO YOU FROM THE HEART
BUT IT’S COMING OUT IN CODE
An ecstatic confession? My mother saw her 1st sunrise
at 93: It was orange NOT yellow! emphatically 2
lines of orange light just over the buildings far off in the sky
It was so beautiful! I didn’t know quite what it was
What is the name of that place in the States where they
covered up a UFO sighting? I thought this was what she
was telling me A fire breathing dragon in the east! A burning
bush on Sinai 1947 Roswell: the flying disk in the sky Or
perhaps like that hard shelled bug the one we kept in a jar +
batted around for an entire summer A visitation? Be careful what
you torture The Gods will likely arrive in disguise
Build a shrine to your innocence It will return with a vengeance at 80
+be all you have left at 90 when the firsts + the lasts areoneandthesame
We came upon ducks It was 1963 Wild with wanting one I trampled
them They fled from said child who trembled with a future approaching
unabated Maps entirely futile Never to be fully navigated
An unshaven holyman crouched by the bullrushes A river flowed through
our ravine carrying the bones of ancestors +those not yet born all the way
from the burbs to Babylon New forms both strange +familiar alighting
like an old grief about every 10yrs. or so Crouching on slow thighs waiting
to be born
__
I must clear the house of my head,
I must make room for a shrine before they all die,
With fireflies and starlight.
(Walcott White Egrets 2010)
RIP Derek Walcott 87 Nobel Prize St. Lucian Prophet
..my muse on a very good day..
Spring 2017
songanddancegirl 