—from a collage by Marsha Connell
War is a symphony of destruction
orchestrated by few & paid for by many.
—anon.
In the gnarled bark of white pines,
an angel is hidden. Once a primordial sea
covered Owen's Valley. Sometimes
when the light is just right,
if you don't quite look, angels lean out
as if the tree were the prow of a ship
launched on the crest of the White Mountains.
We've sailed to the New World and taken the moon
hostage.
Who spilled the moon? Who will drink to it, or mend
its shell?
Annularity at sunset. Light knows its own source.
An eclipse swallowed the moon burning from within.
The faceless musician in a trenchcoat holds the
cello—
concealed behind the saturnine curves of resonant wood.
Who gets to be the cellist in the next incarnation?
Or the cat? Where is the orchestra?
Who's left to interpret the dreams of 1644? Or now?
Morphos is asleep. A netted fish for Medusa's hair.
The moon is made of basalt like the sea floor.
More dead than alive, the tree hangs onto dreams,
hangs onto life by a thin Cambrian cord,
umbilicus to earth; its roots—archaic seeds
that sprouted before the Bible was proscribed.
Shadows of branches finger the air,
ply the wind, fretting the traces
for an ancient symphony of light.
Summer 91/92
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