FANTASIA FOR MARIETTA

{With Balloons}

When you are lonely, love,
Remember that your loneliness
May be but empathy with mine.
If I have caught some shadow
Of your heart,
This flight of private words
Will be, when we're apart,
Our ghost of bread and wine.

i.NATURE

Look, against the clouds!
The redtail we saw sitting
On the lowest branch,
The redtails turns and turns
Aboved on level wings.
Suddenly the sun, the wind
A flash of skyblown feathers,
The color of your hair.
The hawk's eye's on the fieldmouse,
Whose eye's upon the insect and the seed.
The naked round of energy
Is so decreed.
I see its awesome beauty
Through your eyes.

Yet sometimes when life seems
One desperate and futile leap,
Like a plane that leaves
The bodies strewn across
The first small hill,
Or looking toward my grave physique,
I see an old humped salmon,
Lustful in his white ascent,
Lie spent, in shallow water--
All torn by matters bleak,
I come to you.
And in our secret hours,
By our river, at out table,
In our bed,
Your soul still sings:
"There is sweet power
At the core of things."

Someday I'll know
Your inwardness.

. . . . . . .
FIRST BALLOON

The long, harsh hiss,
And creaking ropes,
The struggle to ascend.
We've missed the houses
And the deadly branches.
I SOMETIMES DREAM WE'RE RISING
ABOVE A MIDDLE-EASTERN CITY,
AN ORCHESTRA IS PLAYING
ON A BALCONY IN AIR.
THE SAGE POINTS UPWARD
FROM HIS BOUYANT PERCH
AND WISHES US FAREWELL.
I feel your breath
Upon my cheek,
Your hands.
The sea-green canopy aloft,
Our basket swaying free,
The animals are miniscule,
The cities made for dolls,
The once proud waves
But thin white lines
[O Meredith!]
Along the shore,
The starry kingdom everywhere,
The grand managerie,
And we, like Nature's gods,
We are everywhere,
Marietta.

. . . . . . . .
ii. SPIRIT

Last night, outside your house,
Did you hear the wind chimes
Mingling in no wind?
Did you hold your blouse
Up to your face,
Then check a handkerchief
I may have touched that day?
Were love's forensics
All to no avail
Until you caught
My scent within the room?
And did you feel the unseen
Paws across your bed?
There, beside your head,
I was the soft warm pads
And gentle claws
That brushed your cheek.
And on your shelf,
With the brittle urchin,
Relic of the ancient sea,
We were the pale white doves
Huddled in its tree.

Of did you fly to me?
I lack the inborn gift,
The second sight,
Or yet it comes so seldom,
As in the dream, my father
Led me to a window
Of my childhood home,
Pointed to Grandmother
All fiery on her bed.
Next morning I received
The phone call: she was dead.

The other night I woke,
The shortwave dial aglow,
The static drone of propaganda,
Of madness, megatons, and might,
Of children armed with wooden rifles
Scampering over hills to drive
The "devils" to the sea.
The terrorists' taking credit
For murdering a mother
And her children at an airport.

Then I thought I heard your voice
And you whispered of the peace
Beyond the worldly plane,
If we would only seek.
And then I felt your hair
[O, Dante Gabriel!]
Upon my cheek.
I tasted just a hint
Of Liebfraumilch.

. . . . . . . .
SECOND BALLOON

The air's so thin up here.
No wind, and yet we drift
Through galaxies. No sound,
Our canopy of fine white silk,
Our basket whiter than the froth
Upon a milky sea.
We do not kiss, but share
A ghostly consummation,
Do not make love, but fuse
Like magic holograms
From the cameras of the gods.
Pure energy, we merge
And part and merge.
The constellations, once
So heightened we could see
The jewels in Orion's belt
The tint of Cassiopea's hair,
The grand forms vanish
And we enter into light
And light and light and Light.
And we are
What ultimately we are,
Marietta.

Max Edward Cordonnier
Revision of an 80's poem, with illustration