Womb, She Who Loved  Delius, Untamed Evening

Womb

She creates us, the known,

in unknown’s name.

From chantries of her womb,

whales descant, renewing

old season’s tune. Pebbles

rolling on beaches are

rubbed and rounded, as judgments

reduce to unmarked mind.

 

When She is absent, we keen.

When present, we are speechless.

She who loved Delius

(in memoriam Jude)  

When black bird comes close and with beady eye

gazes unwaveringly, you know the gate

has been opened for memories to walk through.

Past encounters present in the hedgerow.

 

In one hand you hold a brush, the kind

Chinese calligraphers use,

in the other a small Buddha in need of dusting.

“I have not used this brush in years, and you,

needing to mind lenses, will make good use of it.”

Said the stooping artist to the man, who in his youth

grew his hair long because he was a cinematographer.

The artist had a daughter who played Delius on

a grand piano. She schlepped it wherever she lived.

When friends freaked out, she talked them down,

calmed protestors at political rallies, paid taxi men

with bottle caps. The young man married, had a son,

forsook his camera, that made a record

of the world out there, and looked within,

finding a small Buddha in need of cleaning.

 

The brush now found itself being used

for a purpose never anticipated by its Chinese maker,

the hunched artist or his serene daughter.

Sweeping gently dislodged a cloud of dust that had

accumulated on Buddha’s ear lobes, on head whorls,

on soles of lotus feet. Where there is action, there is also

counter-action, traction at the cost of raising dirt, karma

awakening awareness for those who have been hurt.

 

Daughter who loved Delius, forgive my neglect.

From the other world, sense my thoughts of you,

that arise with love, and not from regret. There may yet

be more encounters in hedgerows, and on hill tops

where circles of pines sigh in sudden wind.

 

Untamed evening

Harvester spirals cornfield. Rooks fly

to hilltop pines. Surely a call from past lives

has impelled our encounter; how else

could we experience ourselves as perfected

aromas blended in flasks of desire?

 

We embrace like wounded veterans,

like teenagers flushed from kissing.

 

Harvester continues to cut the corn,

gears and belts whirring, coming closer

and moving off by turns.

Wide wings of evening archangels

dissolve into immensity of sky.

By Misha Norland