Calliope

By Roy Dean Doughty
7/29/08

We fly over multitudes of lights, vibration-beings
Utilizing the morning breeze to strum
Selected leaves of the ivy thicket.
Suddenly, we pause, and some of the blue
Of the sky takes shape as music inside
Our head, exactly, at first, like an F natural,
Which then splays apart, and, like beads
From a single splash, strike the momentary
Fixity of our attention, and scatter prisms.
“It is subtle,” says a voice, “in order
To keep from being overwhelming.”
The subtlety, however, is so intricately
Exquisite, that when we see the small
Head of a yellow finch peep for an instant
From all the persistent green, there is
A break and time, and a valve that we
Did not know existed, is opened in our
Hearts. Millions of tiny lights swarm out,
Bunch, turn, spiral, thin to threads,
Like flocks of vast migrations, and then
The lights coagulate again, and we see
That this immense flourishing is only
The ivy flicked by the morning’s breeze.
But what happened to all that unsequestered
Time? Did it run backwards, swiftly,
To childhood, there to discover that purer,
Earlier body, bluer and brighter,
And peacefully carnivalesque?
The thought is exquisite, but subtle, oh so subtle,
Like a tone in the leafshine, far to swift to catch.

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