Sunday, March 09, 2008

Moods of a March Evening

I

Listening to a song
that was a favourite
before I wrote my poems –
how different it is now!
Running through a field,
aura scattered carelessly,
wet grass between my toes,

I watch the sun turn west
right there behind the hills,
its spheres lingering behind
on a tray of cake and wine,
on a statue of a mother and child,
in the bass of a bullfrog –
the dying sounds of sunset.


II

Here, amid this rubble,
this unsorted pile of bills,
memoranda, greeting cards,
here is where I will write,
on this table, heavy and firm.
This is the cave, the wall,
where I will leave a handprint,
mine, in ochre,
burnt red at the edges.
In the flickering shadows
of the dying fire
you will feel me breathing,
moving, fingerpainting.
Near my hand you will see
bison, wild boar, mammoth,
the caveman’s verses,
the shaman’s prayers,
odes to the bow, the spear,
the sabre-toothed tiger.
On the rough surfaces
of the impenetrable rock,
on this wide plasma screen,
I will not colour by numbers.


III

This March evening
even the snow is in bloom;
wild white petals drift down,
coating all in weightlessness,
evening sticks out its tongue
to catch the wings of flakes,
a chameleon in a coat

of sandalwood smoke.


Wrote this in March 2007, in stages. My book, Sorrows of the Chameleon, had just been published, and I was still on a roll.

1 comment:

Bill said...

A fine group, again impressive for its variety--for example, the power of the second one, the lightness and delicacy of the third.