DREAM VESSELS # 38 Morning Tea
—From a collage by Marsha Connell
A white
rose transmuted above the empty cup
the act of
just after breaking night’s fast
everyone
dressed in the white shrouds of sleep
arise,
binding the sheets to their heads, a cowl
they become
winged like angels, or ghosts
see how the
white rose stretches on extended wing towards the light
she is a
swan song going about her business rooted in the commerce
busy-ness
like bees we congregate in all the world’s places
uninhabited
by ghostly shrouds
we become
monozygotes
the
ouroboric serpent circling the cup is trapped in the saucer
forever
destined to chase his own tail
in some
places of the world peasants lay out saucers of milk for the snakes
as if they
were children or cats and there is a certain catness about them
they listen
to the wisdom of the earth through their ribs
in summer molt
they are blind sensing the heat
as the
herds of people commuting to work
the ritual
of morning tea is a sacrament
the knife
severs the dream world from the workaday world
there is
such elegance in all that whiteness
bone china
abstractions
the spine
of each feather tinged with pale yellow
the blue
white apparitions of the crowd, we see only the backs of their heads
they seek
Mecca
the snake
churns around the saucer counterclockwise
though we
no longer adhere to the notion of the coriolis effect
to go counterclockwise
is the notion of ascendance
we always
seek the top. Clockwise we start at the azimuth and the end
only to
fall from grace struggling toward the eleventh hour and the death knell
while the
snake unwinds time and the notion of handedness
right and
wrong dexter and sinister
the lifting
of tea to the lips
the leaves
of the camellia family,
neo-colonial
issues arise out of this whiteness that suggests purity, or even death
the art of
tea, the humbling of self and the offering of self as action, as gift
the
distillation of the ancient regime of Zen Buddhism in the act of tea
but we are
finished with such notions
the symbol
of the snake is repeated in the abstract patterns of the cup
its body, a
shoreline, rippling waves in the cosmic void
as it
searches out its own tail
when the
snake lets go, it is said, is when catastrophe strikes
the snake
cannot find the end of himself and so he endlessly circles
the cup of morning
seeking to
heal the breech but we have lost the earthly wisdom of snakes
they’ve
been banished from the garden (sub rosa) concealment
that is why
everyone is facing Mecca in search of the garden of the psyche
but the cup
is half-empty and half-full, we cannot see the bottom of it
no need to
find a gypsy to read the fortune in the tea leaves
the
approaching end is self-evident
Gaia’s
final concert of silence amid the ghostly rustle of sheets
inhabitants
of an earlier time when the earth was new
we
creatures have outdone the cleverness of our creator
the shadows
of all oblique angles the curve of the henchman’s arm
and the
final blow rara avis
the rose
lifts her skirts, flies away into the morning light
out of the
depths (ad infinito) from the beginning
the firm
melody of the snake who has no ears, his entire being, a tympanum
the cup is
the egg, the serpent circling the egg, the orphic bowl
the sanctum
of winged serpent but he is outside his realm
and where
are his wings?
Summer 1992
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell
“originally heaven and earth were a single form—the cosmic egg.” Orphic Hymn
MARSHA It’s very angelic, heavenly but those are women dressed in mourning like a landscape. It didn’t get interesting until the snake got into it, Kandinsky designed the cup, it’s an Okeeffe rose he was an abstract artist I’ve got the snakes coming all over the place i don’t like snakes I’m repelled by them it almost makes me cold that snake crawling across my arm they introduce some discomfort the male principal? in all these women they’re all phallic shapes it may be that the soul is resurging up and the angels are coming. one of the rituals after someone dies is to eat, drink, and share the stories. Mourning takes away the sweetness. its’ very contained and constrained a whole other side not visible pain eerie no faces so removed. All you see is their backs. what you see vs. what you know what’s happening snakes in the shape of a wave, waves of feeling, waves of emotion.
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