Deliverance: On the Last Day

     
What happened?    
     
In the second fall from faith      
He cast me from our garden, why?      
He said, surely we won’t die      
Was I his      
Piercing Lucifer      
Dark thorn drawn      
Blood bloom needle through his eye?      
     
Maybe he dreamt foolish      
That our Lord of Love would repen history      
Drawing him again under sheltering wings      
In bargain for our gamboling lamb      
Wearing his hair shirt, swallowing soot,      
Life for austerity of love?      
     
Sudden exile, no bearing lost      
Print of his palm, my spine his wailing wall      
Embryonic, travelling fast      
Through thickening friction atmosphere      
Banished to a voyage      
Unprepared to bear      
His cutting cords      
Dropping alone unwinged stone, astonished      
     
How did you survive?      
     
Growing brighter, searing white      
Nativity crumbling,    
The shell he called me      
Collapsing tumbles burns, heat shields peel away      
Shards of flame      
Stench of feathers scorched    
No more homing to heed,      
Gone his air to my fire      
Cloven chunks of hurt        
One hard death choking      
My smouldering birth heels first    
Swelling chest constricted throat      
Retreating breech, refusing passage    
From a pools of fuel to woods of suffocated flame      
Untethered furie lost, nature fallen      
Rising in tempest, volatile to his exile      
No, no, no.      
     
Where were you?      
     
Evicted from oceanic fields      
Shaken and tossed in grinding night    
Wreathed in shredded wisps of slumbering trust      
A pomegranate jewel swaddled    
Pilfered, cached, rattling trapped      
In glow-walled chambers of me      
Acid-etched with maddening cave drawings      
Our lost playbook in his hand      
     
Falling away I waxed spiraling down    
Kalidescopic close and closer knit    
My yolk my voice a pearl in shell    
Dilating ecliptic in lone gestation,    
Finding lean purchase in cold soil    
Swelling with worried circling in the den      
A restless mother nosing, nipping, bruising      
Urgent to rouse a stillborn pup waning
Wet eyes still shut,      
Turned back to the howling dark
By fatal dreams nursed      
Surely he cannot die?      
   
     
What became?      
     
Who else to listen and spin; this Tell must out,      
Reading aloud to my orphan spooked and penned,      
Hiding pale and chlled, beyond the fires nimbus     
A ragged bard to catch, patch and pass    
Our shape-shift veil of memory?      
My voice coating and crooning      
Offerings to her darkened self,    
Faltering votives in a grotto     
Spoken night by night in shifting light the history      
One thousand and one Tells    
Sew shut gently the many cuts      
Balmed sweet revising words  
Knit in the womb amending,      
Slowly threads the knowing needle,      
Will we surely prick the spindle?      
Weaving will, gathering aim         
Across her arched and bending frame  
A bow drawn taut
Summoning longing notes and letters told,    
Loosing the feathered tale to fly obedient and true    
Out of an instrument plain alone and growing old      
Lined and stitched, secret velvet pockets sewn      
To cache and scatter crusts of love
Saved for the coming jailbreak      
A breadcrumb trail towards patchwork whispered light      
     
     
Where will you go?      
     
After every Fall      
I rise again unaccountable, flush, fair      
A bold and leaning moon,      
A plump furred lunar moth,      
My antennae delicate and steely now      
Silver bowstring floss      
Playing the night full like a mousing tomcat,      
Sultry, brutal, arcing in response      
Remembering I am cast out  
I will build in a fugue rising, looping,  
This opera, my days in orbit  
Again, again, again.      
     
To retell in broadening ripples,      
By firelight and flute I will echo fuller,      
My sun will romp content, a kite on a string      
And if I gather my own host of angels wax-winged      
My heart won’t break over becoming      
I wont be the burnt offering      
My brown-eyed Phoebus dreamed    
He had bargained for     
The Making of me will not be his prayer      
I won’t be Fallen, undone from my sky      
My beloved will not run like blood  
My beloved will not tell me die      
     
A choir composed, rising on my palms      
Keyed to my pulse tuned by my wing      
I will command, draw close, broadcast and spread      
A tornado, a waterspout, a wilding harvest      
A great humming beast crossing the deep      
Turning one eye to the shifting mirrors above      
Roused a bit from sleep      
The face of my underground sea      
Will gaze fearless full circle fixing me      
     
What is your dream?      
     
My beloved will resurrect one windy morning      
Waking tousled, salt-tinged to bright echoes      
Of a child’s laugh receding      
In the high grass of a new garden  
Those eyes flash, that smile plays about      
Held greening bright in my chambered nautilus      
The saucy flick of his familiar tail, forever      
Leaping the fence again at dawn      
Eyes shut trusting, lolling, mine,      
Freckled with a kiss of sun,      
Glad for the day      
     
Perhaps he dove after my chariot      
Burning  in passage through the spheres      
Perhaps he did not find me, being lost himself    
And now he is here, memory sheared      
Blank and new as a snowy fleece      
Released from his martyr tears      
     
And so,      
Reentry to the garden is a daily burn      
A rehearsal for days and decades      
Arms wide face first falling    
Angle too sharp and you're a burning bride  
Angle too obtuse, you'll skip the surface  
And never penetrate to put your love to rest insde.      
On our last day I will get it right      
Diving from a mile high into a bucket of light    
Until that day, I will overfill and test my glowing fleet,     
How much soul can each lifeboat hold?      
I will break and enter, violate      
The caustic ether world      
Melting failing scorching dropping      
Glad for what salt and blood      
We taste on cheek and fist,      
Breathe the raw air    
I am leaving  
My voice a comet’s tail      
Hanging one moment      
Acrid laughing, coiling, paused like smoke      
Witness suspended, held on inhale,      
Dissolved in what she loves      
Trying her voice in stretching languid vapor      
Before lurching, lifting paisley scattering, exhale      
Exploding in a mindflock as a door slams elsewhere      
A draft sudden jolts the tracings in air      
The flash mob of knowing coalesced pauses, evaporates,      
Fleeting, subsiding, gone as never      
In paisley squidink currents of what crowds about us, yet is not there.  
     
We do not meet again?      
     
In the pale skin sealing burns,      
Day uncurls a promise, soft and weak      
Home, innermost curve of the nautilus,      
Tumbled in the waves,    
The roar is baffled, filtered light     
Where you are willing to live      
The homing light flickers      
A sweet yolk feeds the coil      
Tying heaven and dark sleep.      
No bright robe survives reentry      
A dropping star forged in legion falls alone      
Trued as she is lost      
You merge at the meniscus of sea      
Tears, burned knucklebones      
Giving it up      
A lover mad to be consumed, unlocked      
Returning to salt foam      
Crimson embers splash    
Your fiery steps will brand the stage      
Your cocoon shakes loose, a yoke to shed      
Look up,      
You are yet at sea,      
Holding the horizon your tiara      
One bright grain of light free,      
Delivered