I
Sometimes the
clouds open for no one:
an image
beaming across the morning sky.
A soul lit from
two points,
reflecting back
a convex god.
Calling to it,
there is only
the echo of a valley underneath,
stretched out
and welcoming.
Arms are made of
moisture
and a halo is just the
eyes
wanting to see.
The sun is
arcing back there,
waste of a
shaking gaze.
The vertical
road is laced with chains
to mark a
descent.
The trees bend
silent towards the summit,
expecting a
flash to drench them all.
The moments
where the back light strikes
and boils the
mountain
turn a
scattered architecture into vapor
pouring through
the sky.
II
In another word,
this place is
like any infected limb. What was supposed to be
captured in a
line is gushing,
pouring red
over the tiles.
All the letters
that
were supposed to be sent
I
sent today.
A likeness sits
in prayer posture,
a pose reserved
by history
for those that
lend space to victory.
A light
scuttles up
and into the
creases made when tree limbs flicker
for settling
ash.
A second
feature of light:
an ability to close
space between vision
and sight; say
omniscient again.
Fluttering
slows to spasm
as the fluid
earth becomes a wave.
Days spent with
tiles branding the face,
the collapse of
a moment into never.
III
Traces that
make up
this specter,
an expectation that burdened the day before.
I found another
way to slip across unseen.
To make up a
universe,
split
it and render it bullet-riddled.
To
breathe a mountain of ash
and
force a sentence from your lungs.
To
change the mirrors
that
make up the day and flood it.
The sun
settles
behind
the mountains,
a relief,
if you know
your shadows.
[Published originally in Mandorla 14 in 2012.]
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was inspired to write this poem
after attending a brown bag lecture by Dr. Scott Schnell, to whom the poem is dedicated.
Dr. Schnell is an anthropologist who works in Japan primarily, and was a member
of my wife’s doctoral committee. The lecture was on Banryu, a Japanese ascetic
who believed that mountain climbing was a method of reaching a divine power, a
god. On one such climb, early in the morning, Banryu witnessed something we now
call a Brocken Spectre, the reflection of the morning sun against the clouds,
projecting the image of the individual who is caught in the middle. Banryu
believed himself to be seeing some aspect of this divine power, but of course,
it was just himself, projected onto the droplets of water.
It took me two years before I actually sat down to
write the poem, which otherwise happened very quickly, as if it were already
projected ahead of me, and all I had to do was draw the outline. 9
[N.B. Amish Trivedi has for some time been a close
associate at Poems and Poetics, some of his earlier work having appeared in the
postings of February 25,
2011, October 7,
2012, August 2, 2013, June 16, 2016, and July 5, 2018. He recently
received a Ph.D from Illinois State University, the subject of his dissertation:
"A Wing in a Crumbling Mansion: Poetry in the Post-Academy." (J.R.)]
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