Sometimes the sublime, Dream on dream on, The genius of all that’s mortal & The red river
by Elizabeth Kirschner
[ poetry - april 05 ]
Sometimes the sublime
It’s all half eclipse anyway.
Favor the light. Favor the dark.
Mix them. Taste them as you would a berry
you keep in your mouth, rolling it gently
with your tongue for a long time.
Sometimes the sublime presses into us
lending us a wing, just one wing:
the thought of flight keeps us aloft.
The highest music rolls in under the tongue
of the wave, in the shadows we drink from,
beneath the keening cry.
Think no further than that. The grassy hill
is enough, so are the tattered pelts of moss
and the sun sinking into the vespers of evening.
We’ve been there. We’ll go there again.
Into luxury, into becoming one and the sad tale
that has a glow as it says: be unlike, be unfinished,
be the relishing, be forever begun.
Dream on, dream on
One mirage leads to another: so enchanting
the ornaments of glass hung upon leafy branches.
So many the grains of sand pinched into
the vacuities of the heart.
A black pearl rolls down a silk hill while
the planets exhale their sweet breath into
sensual, passionate springtime.
Mere peace dallies in peach-colored tulips, crocuses
simple as a spinning top. Creatures breathe in
the scents of lemons & figs. So green the vales
that charm succulent moods.
In the upward climb there falls a dozen blue cranes &
one eye of a golden eagle. Dream on, dream on.
The laments we’ve learned are cries, one
after another, which round out the sighs of wide waters.
One blossom drips nectar into the next blossom
until the after-dark comes to take us back.
The genius of all that’s mortal
Rocks ache when storms gnaw them into sacred shapes.
We do, too. Love sneaks up on us, exposing
the transparent nudity of who we are:
a heart without roots, veins woven around
the trellis of bones and deep inside, a hollow
filled with shape-shifting throbs.
Why become a someone when we are filled
with the genius of all that’s mortal?
Dust is dust, flame is flame, foxglove is foxglove.
And us? An uproar for the unknown.
Here and there, periwinkle-colored butterflies
flit and float above whiskered grasses, rattlesnakes
and those who attempt to hunt down ecstasy,
netting it into shreds of soul.
Rather, let there be the silence underlining
bird song, the glow within that harvests
more than one likeness of light and
the bare-faced blossom of the human face.
All that’s sensuous scents us, all that will
never be hovers so near we believe
that’s all we have. It’s so easy to forget
the complex complexions of soul
while we tend to darkness tenderly.
Inside us there’s a wisp of heaven. Adore
whatever comes - a drop of blood
which falls from a cloud that seeps into
the marrow of every minute
that compels us to go and be now.
The red river
The umbilical cord that ties moon to earth is a red river.
Our boats with sails made of dove feathers float in its slurry
of stars. Sunrise with its blushing exhalations, aborts
these journeys which bring us into the realm of startling blessings.
That red river flows through a flute - the highest, mellifluous music
is always stolen, then memorized for the day of resurrection
which bears no judgment, only the specific weight of aromatic tears:
taste one and it will bloom like a kiss upon your tongue.
O underwater bathers, touch your navels for it is the scar
of the only intimacy you will ever know. Weep for
the featherless doves - their coos mourn not for themselves,
but for the sway of our boats as they slip backwards,
farther and farther away from our origins. Our profiles lean
in perfumed essences that well up from that slurry
of stars whose light streaks into bridges which quickly
dissolve in shadows. Cast away, anyway, we have
everything to lose: mother moon, blooming navels
and the only river that can carry us away from
the world’s wars and perpetual hungers, from woe
which swings in between that which we would like to call beauty,
its soft glow melting like wax on the silver knife
sharply severing the red river of our umbilical cord long before
we are ready to be born and long after death assassinates us.
