Hello Tasmania. My apologies for Stateside excess. Apologies accepted
(hope, hope). Something from something called "Mendelssohn":
11
Sometimes you come back to yourself, off-balance.
We tried to do without you, like Sons of Liberty;
the island of our pride was really only
your reflection: a mirror of pine trees, silence.
It's not Narcissus now, no - no one but Odysseus
(or no one). He loses everything - his youth,
his looks, his dog - all for a girl named
Ruth. (Socrates, returning, meets his spouse.)
We sense time passing... this is a fiction
we find rather moving. Mortal lips
cradle a tale-within-a-tale, sleeping
in children's books (your own, your own)
in after-supper's endlessness (head heavy
like a moon, over the planet of the wavy
sheets). No longer you: grown Every-
where (pinpoint of pining memory).
You come back to yourself as someone else,
scarce saved from oblivion, lethal,
the waters misted, steaming. Swells
risen out of silence flock to the western wall's
clear Rose. I saw it standing sheer
against a lake of azure sky -
emblem of motherland, eye
of evening. Ocean's only tear.
In Grandma's diary (robin's-egg blue)
I read: _a fine summer day again_.
So we sense disequilibrium. Sand
through my fingers... I hold it toward you.
7.14.01
