WORD

 

The ceiling billows like a god-struck gale.

Silver bats hang from black rafters.

 

I hear them through water.

 

Gone are all my dreams of periwinkle blue.

I am cold in my chrysalis;

colder still is the unknowing before

second sight…

and the Dark Moon musing across night.

 

I was born from burns, of burns…

Seeing is not a salve.

Brown orreries break,

darker brown ringed rays - not light -

they named for a flower tear, tear. Scald.

Quill? - Lash.

Scald through the caul…after the caul.

 

My skin flakes in pages.

 

I hunger for words and painted hymns!

My belly is taut with verbs.

I need more than mere mouthfuls.

Time is place and place is time.

All is song seeking a voice, a beginning.

My omentum is my omphalos, 

my litany,

my amen.

 

I shadow descriptors and stalk metaphors,

silent as a spectre, bright with the hunt

in my breath and blood.

My tongue lunges before me like a flame

to shallow the poison root

and deepen the eye. I am grown grasping

and frail with yearning for the Word

that would reconcile me with

Moon and invoke Sky.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

 

Image: Fallen Pine at Hague Lake George (1929)

Artist: Harry Wilson Watrous

Source: twitter.com