How she brings odd cousins together, ties ends
in loose knots and evaporates the scene is a magic
I wish for children in hard rain.
She is as cavalier as a broom handle
holds up a skirt that juts from the back of a wood
panel station wagon, a flag to all who follow at leaner speeds.
She is a dream hailing helm to wheel.
Just as wood turns to stone, so do gods petrify
down fast roads. Give us direction, spell out the recipe
for regions we need to breathe. She is not Georgia,
Leonora, Remedios Varo; I am no self.
Our names are mere symptoms.
And though private globules circulate, making the rounds,
the man-made engine of age overtakes every leader.
Her metal hip clangs, energy and time come together,
discussing the terms of the weather.
What does weather offer? What does weather want?
We who make ships move, we who locomote with legs
and arms, who work rudders and conflate engines
with progress, as if one will surely follow another,
we suspect otherwise, and look harder. We were written on
the eve of Art, on the eaves of Art, and bake our community
cakes as follow up. It’s funny, the way we keep nature
outdoors like an envelope between us we mean
to open down the road. With a hiccup of light in a pasture
her recipes gather, words stay with us on loan,
invisible as the oasis one hopes for beyond death’s lapel.
In a hummingbird’s heartbeat, as lean unseen conditions,
the world itself remains a mask. We thus play turrets,
ornaments, rivulets and sequins on the face
of something we dub God or universe, and hope
to be pierced by the crossroads, at least. Such is the role
she plays in the last lap, the one with an offer you may resist.