Appeal

 

Appeal

 

I summon the comet back,

tail oh so long, splendid and glad 

as a cathedral train

sweeping along behind the bride

at the wedding of light to light,

attended by Venus

and a cohort of lucent stars 

there in the western sky

above the skeleton of the gray whale;

 

summon those owls of summer

haunting the interstices

of Shakespeare’s soliloquies,

frisky or fateful murmurs

in the hallowed grove, there on

the unceded ancestral homeland

of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe.

 

I persuade the traces 

of the driftwood labyrinth 

drawn in remembrance 

on our little sandy beach 

to tarry one more day 

here on this shore,

on the uneasy limen of winter

and the onerous year beyond.

 

A line or two of it’s rewritten every night 

by the kleptic November waves, 

exacting this and that, 

but I bid what stray sticks and branches 

of the whole circle are still in place 

and can be paid homage by my bare feet

to stay a little longer within reach 

in their steadying dignity,

in their contemplative orbit. 

 

Inspiration.  Heartsease.

Sometimes, I think, all that

can possibly save us.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell