Closing Time
GYJ
It wasn't just vision, because mouth swallowed it,
not just a shiver from breeze on skin
as body and skeleton arched from within
surprised by entwining with other,
seeming independent need and passage;
and taste was there too,
with deeper bursting volcanic of darkest blue
not even ordered but conjoining as
two streams through sacred mountain passes
suddenly meet and flow as one.
Would you call it mastery of illusion?
The deepest art and science
of madness that finds itself
in central column exploding in praise and prayer
as if it were never alone
but suffused in light suddenly expanding beyond
fragile borders of physical frame?
Will you wasten these morning glories,
dragging them to wilderness
where void meets itself yet still affirms
the angelic sense of mirage?
Perhaps this is the last learning-
this old tale abandoning itself again
and rejecton that would dry out
all confluence of soul-
seeking to survive that way,
Eden lost as existence itself
shivers through watery reflections of life,
leaving promise behind,
all broken and wounded,
as I stumble to notice
how golden doors to Bliss slam shut
sometimes without warning
or trace of human respect.
How I yearned for a bridge,
or small vessel humbly ferrying
apprentice souls, timid in sublimity
to affirm passage from this world to that-
a simple frame of mercy,
a stable hand,
a voice soft and open from afar-
real as we know it,
yet quiet like currents of time,
anchoring it all in wisdom
and telling
how these worlds never divorce.
|
