Gold ground. White horse.
The lance always descending,
the dragon always caught —
not slain, not winning,
that suspension my daily bread,
the point perpetually
at the point of.
I returned to it as to a chapel,
the dragons within
held by that stasis,
by what the icon
promised and kept.
Then —
the gold ground shifting,
the lance no longer
quite descending,
the dragon lifting —
St. George,
for the first time,
imperiled.
The always
became
was.
I am undone.
Discombobulated am I,
but matters it not.
The wind knows no grammar;
the rain has forgot.
Unraveled the morning,
unmapped, the way—
yet onward the light moves,
indifferent, the day.
Hairs in the damndest places—
Sticking out of ears and nostrils,
Sprouting on shoulders too.
Yet suddenly sparse
Upon the summit
Where once the forest stood.
The trees that remain
Fade in color,
yet glisten pure and bright,
Catching light,
the darker growth once swallowed.
The forest thins.
The dome beneath
Opens to sky—
as if return to morning,
the bare crown
lifted toward first light.
The brevity of life catches one short of breath.
We thought there was time to inhale once more, only to discover a final exhalation.
Was it a dream, a hallucination, or merely the meeting of the circle?
Stars. Dust. Return.
The poem finally opened itself:
after readings enough, I saw
how the line broke, why
that word and not another.
The pleasure—self forgotten
in attending, briefly lodged
in someone else’s precision,
language doing its work.
Book to shelf. Poem to page.
The body turns to its ablutions:
water, soap, the day undone.
I glance up at the mirror—
it will not hold image.
Water still running. My hands, still wet, suspended.
The book already distant on its shelf,
the lines loosening, unheld.
Northcoast Antiquarian 