Matter’s power consoles: take for instance
the woodpecker’s tongue, how it whips around
the little Jerusalem of his brain, then darts out quite suddenly–
sweet-swoop flame, incandescent god…this is
wisdom’s dizziness, what the depressive forgets
as he rotates daily in the unending asura of thought,….
Heavy rain all winter, then up from the herculean depths, numinous lilies
like dulcet-toned instruments: harps, zithers, flutes–
the fugitive fabric of what is ineffable, daunting, as when
one evening the lonely astronomer stared out
into the quotidian universe and discovered the region of space
beyond Neptune where vast numbers of small icy
objects circle the sun in cold storage; such is the over-abounding
trace of survival, the majestus energy that beckons
the diminution of self analogous to the morning when trying to make love
the couple were simply too distracted by the exalted song
of the May bird, a western tanager perhaps—ruddy orange jester
gleaning its way from oak to conifer as the beatific heat in the sky
intensified, so they abandoned their inchoate ritual, and lay there
apart in humble submergence and private devotion.
