Monday, March 9, 2009

Convergences


Within a few days, I've heard from people long silent, some basically for years. One wants me to come to a film festival Miami over the weekend. It is another's birthday. I get calls from those who have moved, people I haven't talked to for months. All about town, flowers are in bloom. Birds go mad with song. My spirit of adventure is awakened. I plan trips, change routines, have hope.

I send emails back immediately, but the line is dead. Silence. They all fall back into the void. Something must have happened, some arrangement of the stars, some planetary convergence.

I will not be dissuaded. Maps challenge the imagination. I have changed if nothing else. I am heartened.

4 comments:

  1. something i've been working on ... well sort of for at least a year. okay so not really working on it just sort of looking at it.



    Mapping

    1.

    Leaving port
    our three masted ship wafts lullabies

    and the corner carousel spins
    to a perfect C ringing

    like ribbons of cherub laughter.
    The creek ice sits thin on top of things --

    from underneath flocks of birds drunk
    on sunlight leached from the pale sky

    carol a song ---
    the refrain buckles us

    and this is not Then but happening;
    where a lover becomes king of the world

    and Jesus joins the picket lines
    where mullato babies can't be sold

    for money turned into white powder.
    Lost and following frozen breadcrumbs

    the woven cord scrapes our palms
    while it unravels


    2.

    The masts fold slowly inward
    the nightsongs unsing themselves --
    form an unholy wrinkle
    on the dome's smooth plane
    and what is left stings
    the eyes of the children left standing
    on the reeded shore
    their toes sunk in warm sand
    where grass blades wet and bent
    compete with twisted moonbeams
    held in their small hands
    for what is left of a distant reflection.
    Mica flakes the air
    and flower-juice stains their cheeks.
    A white owl's low incantation
    shakes the branches
    awakening Mab
    who runs her chariot
    over drowsy heads
    while Mercutio's' shadow dangles
    from an unbreakable limb.
    He's laughing at their lust
    that Love

    fractal
    the flashing water
    the ship's prow breaking forward--

    in the headlands, laughter, a girl
    presses her perfumed breast
    to a hopeful boy's face --whispers
    a wounding language
    that dances along the edges

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  2. I'm still a hopeful boy. This was a nice segue into today's post (though much more artfully written.

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  3. I like the line about maps stirring the imagination - so true.

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  4. Funny, the same thing has happened to me lately...must be something happening in the universe. Good to know it's nothing personal. The difference between you and me is that you are still heartened...I am not.

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