Atlantis, a reading

Atlantis (with Tania P)

Perhaps the female body, at point of conception, rimmed with oracular palace green like a trio of Wyland dolphins, spirals to the ocean floor for one night in Atlantis. The father, if he wakes in time, finds his way by the rivulets of her beads of air.

Maybe at the moment of birth, the daughter emerges from the churning sea as if awakened from a trance, draped with green flowers of Poseidonia. Her venturing out from the unsearchable spot relaxes brittle sponges until they are soft and supple, filling them with the beauty of the outcome.

Three Stars (with Tania P)

Perhaps this longing, like the nude spring wind slipping through the window screen, shifting the redwood boughs to allow three stars their intermittent due, belongs to me, the maker, and the one I love, perfect in deformity of distraction and infinite reach. Stay, stars, in direct line of view. Stay, body, bridged in this remembrance, this forgetting.

Maybe, when peering into the depths of my own shadow, every beginning and ending disappears in the heavy silk tapestry of dream, where all overlapping is seen in an instant, like watching a circle close.  Tonight as I rest in the geometric curve of perfumed air crowning the starlight above my head, I hear your voice removing darkness like food for the birds – stitching a golden thread of flowering plum along an unfurling road.

A Lost Art ( a collaboration with Tess)

Perhaps when you are silently reading, your hair takes on the appearance of somebody sleeping. You move among the pages, turning over between two dreams. The mountains rise behind as you inhabit the stillness of the bay, and immerse yourself in the gentle sunlight gliding along the water’s surface. The story is worth your attention, yet nothing will come of it, no one will be saved.

Or maybe your stillness invites the anonymous sleeper who curls into the placid blue surface of your dream, to be that silent witness beside you in waves like the rippling heat rising as you turn to see the plunge and shadow of a pelican’s wing, just as it passes beneath the sun. And you are of two minds, one that will stay after the dream recedes to watch the water, the other that will travel through the mountain passes with men one can only dream of, their thick braids hidden under the wooly coats they wear, and their large empty hands like wooden begging bowls. In the distance, a soft clanging of bells.