The flash of plain matter

Meager sliver of a moon glowing
against violet and pink smudged skies,
italicizes the fluid movement
of the great blue heron sweeping past.
Cold air nibbles coyly at my cheeks,
and heeding the ospreys’ cries I watch
as they hasten grandly overhead.
The dogs on their leashes sniff and identify
relinquished whiffs of other animals.

On the horizon,
silhouettes of massive pines
seem as real to me as they always have.
I have no need to touch them, to
feel the roughened bark scratchy
beneath my hand. I accept their veracity.
The hum beneath my feet frames
the concrete just as unromantically.
Dried grasses in bleached tones,
etched into the hardened soil,
tell a story of drought.
If I listen, I can hear the
brittle whisper of their thirst.

Each day I revel in plain materiality.
Cooking dinner, walking the dogs,
caring about the people in my life.
Faced with the tasks that living brings,
I continue to draw upon fleeting wealth.
Yet each day I go out to count the
nesting pairs in this season of rebirth.
Seeking balance between joy and pain
by giving space to each in its own time,
I strain to unearth my precepts.

My teacher is a shadow reaching
through to rouse me from my blindness.
Baptism by sheer ecstacy, it unfolds
the fabric of the source and wraps it around me.
Enforcing mastery of the steps to gain access
into the warp and weave of the matrix;
so to dance with the emanating layers.
But, I need to know why.

I always need to know why;
and so I am shown a masked existence
as I am dragged down and tucked among
film noir scraps - a trailer of Parisian streets;
a little girl’s room and a trunk-full of pretty dresses.
A dark-haired woman on the sidewalk,
attired in midnight blue. Terror in a dark closet.
Betrayal between two men on a balcony -
flash of a pointing gun and a pointed glance
in my direction; sorrow welling in my heart.
The significance blurry at best - a past life nexus
to this phantasm clinging to me, perhaps.

Sooner or later I revert to solidity.
Snuggling the soft and responsive child
sitting in my lap, I know I am still here. Here.
Within this bounded reality that most of us agree on.
Her laughter reassures me - anchors me.
I’m cogent - my feet touch the ground.
But there are places where routine peripheries
falter and I step through - or tumble into -
another amplitude.

What drops into my hand I feel;
and savor all that slips across my tongue.
Safe predictability sets me in this world
as firmly as a gemstone in its prongs.
Though my eyes settle for daylight’s illusions;
like the ruby, they can be pried loose
and I see further - to a place
where essence seems to slip and slide.
The sort through dreams and fantasies
and recollections does not yield this
field of limitless possibility - lacking
the petty borders instituted by panicked
men. All undone by a brief plunge
through the dimness, riding upon
planetary harmonics - verging on
the emergent gleam of ordinary things.
What did you expect?
We get what we ask for.


© 2001 Melissa Songer