REDboat
You require me to read and reading
to step into space as if I were
haltered to the sun,
assume molecules of air beneath my feet;
to walk on water, only less so.
°°
Clouds mass and flow,
the breaks between them opening faster than the
words you speak.
My history is folded into a small square of page and colored with childhood ink -
its black
faded to brown, a seepage away from shadow
and into contours of time -
°°
The page - a packet - turns, escapes applied color,
and what lies beneath my fingertips reduces to fewer words,
insupportable and misplaced.
From what book has this page come?
My feet reach out for words,
their path promised me.
°°
Steppingstones or mosaic tile,
the
sheets realign, re-collect into a patchwork.
Wind-tossed,
a red boat rocks past, gone rusty from airy breaths
and the painter's imaginary hand.
°°
We are reshuffled,
slip like grass
brushing across the cheek
of the face:
"Like the random pattern
of the robe dyed with young purple
from Kasuga plain
-
even thus, the wild disorder
of my yearning heart"
Letters curve like fingers and harden into a carapace:
A question
forms on the white field,
hesitations advance to black.
°°
I
believe you have sworn on a book with a brightly colored title page,
made a pact between you and your gods.
Your
mouth a red boat.
°°
Forces form around each volume - two figures
wrapped in black
weave into conductivity.
Out over the rooftops of London, lightning strikes.
You
who met me half way,
there's no telling how words will be read:
they form a plasma
°°
a red boat strung on copper
wired into canvas. Only over pages will they peel away
and the mute figures disrobe
into utterance.
°°
The silence between syllables hangs like a question
mark
and, so, touch between us melts into a brief deferral of motion
°°
Fugitive,
our bones are hollow and the color of a quill
ink filled,
carved for flight:
birds rising from surfaces of water,
a gleam of silver spilling down the feathered wing.
Copyright
© Jaime Robles, 2009
