💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~rjcks › poems › denise.gmi captured on 2022-04-28 at 17:26:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2022-01-08)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

On a Black Mountain

I imagine Denise Levertov hanging

a pair of red knickers out to dry

solitary on a wire: the house bunting

laughs and sings its early morning office,

the swifts rise on the warming air, across

the rooftops the kestrel calls to the hunt,

and as the noise from the restless street grows,

the day begins and the wire is bare.

She hoists a white-flag, calling for a truce,

and so I read and I read and I read,

congruences cascading around me,

ice-cold enervating flashes of insight,

then the roar of the nubian lion

foregrounds a piece or two of poetic truth,

And Leo Bloom shuffles off, searching

the secondhand bookstalls for a woman's love.

From the shadows beneath the pines and firs

on the black mountain the muted bigfoot

groans, pondering also the meaning

in his inarticulate angst, longing,

desire beyond sensuous copulation,

beyond a dream of artistic bonding,

exchanging verses and sentimental

embrace on a rug by the crackling logs

in a tenured poetic retreat,

beyond any written record

of the sacred dance of yin and yang:

turning a page or two of the book of life,

then stepping out onto the street,

where a ferret of a man scurries past

holding a small handmade wooden cage

with perched on top a young kestrel,

no panic in its eyes, but an interest,

a fierce attention to the way ahead.

[2021-07-13 Tue]

Home