Passing Into A Sweeter Solitude As It Gets Older
Passing into a sweeter solitude as it gets older
the sunset takes one long last look over its shoulder
like the darkening tree line on a wavelength of hills
back at the valley that it's just lived its way through
following its mindstream like a pictographic musical motif
through an ordeal of blessings that maimed my ability to believe
in any cave painting that says it's a found religion.
It isn't any harder to reverence the stars in a parking lot
than it is in the woods. They can burn inside me
like candles at a black mass, or righteous cherubim
with flaming swords like two nightwatchmen
on either side of the gate that exiles me
from the garden of my heart, and leaves me
with the cornerstone of my skull
to enshrine my homelessness in like an open door
without an entrance or an exit; either way
I've never been the poster boy of anyone's morality play.
One Perseid, my meteor shower on a Saturday night
because I'm sitting on the patio at the Imperial,
with Simon, Johnny, Joe, Sheldon, James
and a jumping bean of a girl whose name I forgot
but who was the house dj checking out the quality
of ipads that were looking up the constellations
that shone so virtually in their hand-held eyes
but had been culled to near extinction like buffalo
by the light pollution smudging the view
of the seventh magnitude sky overhead
that is used to being ignored for its brilliance
by blind star-nosed moles chewing through
the white canes of their electronic roots and nervous systems.
It's good the watchers are handing out
integrated third eyes of what they want you to see
like Pax genes in the Pre-Cambrian,
a Cyclops enamoured of an observatory,
a Dajal, the one-eyed, red-haired liar,
or those so mesmerized by a tv or computer screen
it's moot whether it was Perseus or the Medusa
who turned who to stone. Bread and circuses,
the watchers are watching the eyes of those
who are watching them like an iris scan
of the same old documentaries that ran yesterday
when the mystery of the light emerging from the darkness
was still camera shy, and the history
of human insight into matters of moment
such as the death of a comet in the upper atmosphere
wasn't just the photo op of a warning
no one's listening to, throwing a wild-eyed tantrum
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poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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