
Crow tracks (Photo credit: Suncatcher Craft Eyes)
The mystery of their language escaped me,
amorphous and indistinct, for most of my time
here on the outskirts of together.
Head down, I kept myself protected
from that dust cloud of sight and sound,
choking back any words I could form
but I never would hear. No one would hear.
I was the deaf man of Babel, understanding
no tongue but that within, and it was heavy, harsh
and sharp, a great burden upon my head and heart.
But, illuminated by the light of an angel’s sword
thrust through those clouds into my soul,
my downcast eyes could parse the cuneiform script
of a crow’s trail on a pallid tablet of snow.
It had written my own Enuma elish,
the creation tale of this poet’s world.
Its words, carved deeply frozen in that moment,
could be gone tomorrow. Gone where I now heard
their brothers on the wing, singing a wordless poetry
that, too, evaporated into the vivid, multi-hued aether.
I, too, wished to express that moment of sorrow, joy,
wonder, even love, in my own script. I’d sing my own
songs of hope, longing, exultation and comfort.
So I meet with you again and again, dipping my pen
in your lavish blessings that have turned the once-deaf
into a interpreter of Nature’s messages, the whispers
of the lovers and the unloved, and of us, as one,
here on the outskirts of together.
Like this:
Like Loading...