bird. I stroke her spiky fur as she drops the offering and curls up
against her towering giant. I feel its cool paws against my feet.
The surprised news anchor guessed correctly: in the end, this
was all just a love story. A meaningless affair, empty spaces straining
to be filled. I apologize for trying to fill them. But I am also proud.
What else is there for me to say? I am all these things and more, but
mostly I am sorry and I am proud. I don’t know of any words more
sincere, more extravagantly enormous than those.
But I will ferret them out nevertheless. Like the narcotic leaves of
grass spreading throughout our neighborhood despite the city’s best
efforts to stop them, heliotropes and hallucinations as well sprout
unbidden from my pen.
On narrow lonely pass
I met the holy one at last,
The one that made
The only sun to shine.
I spoke my artful thesis
That he broke the pot to pieces
And wouldn’t deign
To make them recombine.
He said fissures made by sun and shade,
That tear the garden from the glade
Are not the whim
Nor will of things divine.
Vicissitudes of Nature
Tear the earthly musculature.
The fault is hers, he said,
My son, not mine.
So I moved next door to Nature,
Read her garden’s nomenclature.
She confessed her work
Was accident plus time.
But without the cataclysms
That rent my soul to schisms,
I’d have never tried to leave
The seas of slime.
ABYSSINIA
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