You Are Our Lady of smoke and window sills
and I am a wheel made of rope and memories
A birch skin sun, full of poetry and rum
lays out its playing cards on the breeze
If I have hurt you, take this yellow bird
and ask it to sing your childhood back
If it dies in your palm, then you'll know that all along
we've lain our hearts together on the track
There is no dome of heaven blue enough,
to pose as Sunday's ornament
no coin to buy the peacock's lovely strut
and no tongue to tell you what it meant
In every water well, a witching stick
to guide the thirst back to our lips
where we could cure the snowblind trumpeter
and offer him our silence like a kiss
There is no morning glory blue enough
to pose our fanned out deck of saints
or to repair the garland in your hair
that falls like leaves we pretty up with paints.
Oh Shay this is gorgeous on so many levels! I love the movement and feel of a flaming touch yet never having a true hold on something magnificent like love itself. All the imagery is wonderful that only a great poet could create! Love, memory, and regret...all things we can relate to but not speak of so amazingly as you just did!! The rhyme adds to it's beauty! I love this poem my friend!!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see you followed your tag and posted this, because this beauty shouldn't languish in a side pocket, but rather be placed here like the jewel it is to glitter, whether eyes are on it or not. I love the many many skillful images and metaphors in this--every line is rich with them, especially the opening lines of the first two stanzas, and the entirety of the last three. Not a word there that doesn't pull its weight. I could quote them all, but you know what you wrote. A dazzler of a poem Shay, full of love and loss and all it is to be human.
ReplyDeleteSo amazing. The stanza about the yellow bird especially spoke to me.
ReplyDeleteFor me .... your poem speaks 'forgiveness' .... it is breathtaking.
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