I’m almost afraid to look back, but on reflecting, I think yesterday’s poem played a little trick on me. Why did bees appear? They have priors, but why just then? And birds all of a sudden? Oh. The Birds and the Bees. A little nervous pulse is throbbing somewhere, but so far it is only in the poems.
The constant return to the image of a child, usually specified as a boy, must be a Christian echo–but that doesn’t reveal as much as it might seem, if so. The Lovers are both in and out of time, so the woman might be seeing the man’s earlier stages, perhaps from more than one life. They will also allude to whatever archetypal imagery serves, as they are where it originates. They are in the Imaginal, so the rules are whatever they need them to be. It’s confusing from here, not least to me. The poems have a sort of integrity of coherence in the long run, so I try to trust them.
Almost Spring Equinox–that always brings some interesting magic. Preparations are under way!
15 March 2021
15
Can–Will–Dare?
She held a silent, smiling child
in a brittle photograph long ago–
one which had faded all the while
its presence had waited for her to know
the child was unwanted then, and still.
Frost on the window glaring white,
litter inside the windowsill
where snow’s gotten in–good day, good night,
good omen–you first-rate waking sign.
How is he so familiar now,
though he must surely–dying lie–
Don’t tell me more than lore allows–
I have an absent sense of no
wonder the Moon is full and new:
Deep in the eyes of childish woe,
someone is signing sooth through you–
peeled like a slow grey shadow-ghost
off a thin paper surface cracked
and bent to a purpose known to most
of those of us here–old paper backed
by the name of the littlest orphan boy.
What if he’d lived only long as this,
knowing his letters would bring her joy,
if only the gift of secret bliss
he’d borne across nothing existing so
her pleasure would bloom a soul through skin.
Only a ghost, a child of woe–
he can’t take you home. Can you let him in?
Rain Harp 