Until the white shadows arrive
I Godiva by the roadside to help undress

      a Gordian waltz of thoughts and twigs
fingers and figs strangled at one

In this state of being
I long to bless the damask magnolias

captured by my lengthening shadow
for they are offering me a shy and gentle reason to live.

But I am not endowed to be a man of the cloth.

My hand-held mirror reveals me – or some other – twitching
by the tall flower trellises and low bushels of cloud

feet making no contact with asphalt or tree-minds
shoulders suspended on twitters from above.

Round the honeysuckle bend, iterating
short breaths

      molecular encounters with fragrance
familiar yet brand new – not one repeating scent

similar exhalations splatter the road
with same different Jacaranda off-cuts

On the way to white swan on a breezy day
I drop my fate into the porous grass

      to sway where the only living limbs are still megalithic dancers
the only voices snake from beaks.

Black and rowdy starlings skitter
instinctively even more I lose the dry coat of humanity to become their totems.

The spaniel's sleeping paw
reminds me of a Jack Be Good squash grown in the shape of a bone

waits patiently in the sun to germinate
into a walk so

I turn my back on peace once more
step and step again to the broken patterns in all things

Shadows arrive back like breakfast doves.
I form in their hungry beaks, reflect in their brittle eyes

devoured, I must be scattered by myself and
and eaten by others to be returned.

Regrown in the shape of a bone.

12/26/2006

Posted on 12/26/2006
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