slow
or We Have No Knowledge of Such a World
A Winter Wren sustained on last summer’s snowmelt
lends his voice to our fence to measure days’ ends
and starts. In order still bound to sunlight’s lost edge,
he calls, cries, takes his post, cries out again, descends;
and how are both still here–the wren who felt
wind’s last breath spin through man’s junkyard,
saw before his very eyes, and mine, assemblage
of all our scattering parts into that damn jet engine,
fusualage, wings, emergency exit, tray table?
No room for envy in birdsong. His psalm able,
beak sharp (one clean pull ‘cross one mountaintop),
beckons godspeed, and echoing sentient crystals, says:
A thousand years to complete one good thought?
no big deal given these endless dies days.
7 thoughts on "slow"
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Stupendous.
I can’t paste a favorite
The whole thing, intact
visible, even the redact.
Launchflightingly perfected.
The pummeling and driven nature of those long lines of images are perfection. Great work.
You even slip in rhyme… Well done…
holds such beauty and angst
love: still bound to sunlight’s lost edge
wren who felt
wind’s last breath spin through man’s junkyard,
assemblage
of all our scattering parts
“…the planet travelled along the loops and curves of its inconceivably complex orbit, never retracing the same path. Every moment was unique: the configuration which the six suns now held in the heavens would not repeat itself this side of eternity. And even here there was life. Though the planet might be scorched by the central fires in one age, and frozen in the outer reaches in another, it was yet the home of intelligence. The great, many-faceted crystals stood grouped in intricate geometrical patterns, motionless in the eras of cold, growing slowly along the veins of mineral when the world was warm again…” (Arthur Clark, 1953) been ringing in my mind all June
Love “and how are both still here–the wren who felt/wind’s last breath spin through man’s junkyard…”
…saw assemblage of all of our scattering parts… the hint of patterns growing through all ages are captured here