Maneros
Comestible cream, the August sky
signals stones of summer’s fruit and autumn’s rye.
Air to speech got caught, half–talk.
A labyrinth left by conflict — its boxed in dead–ends
are limits that Daedalus, were he in there
would head–bang to comprehend.
Sun reads a brief day in sidewalk’s chalk.
Rosé, the inaugural sky
and the single–ocean, camel–fog.
An early god was skipping rocks.
Someone was flying a kite, from Island Rock
directing the decline and rise of its rainbow’s flashing —
an artificial seabird; the beauty of her species.
I found you at a meeting with an itinerant interpreter of dreams.
Sundown, you left with everything you could need.
Kite built a nest and left its eggs
top–roof the temple of Elena
where gull–custodians swept by wing, white marble.
Eggs of kite–technology incubated
lucid–dreams on Leda.
Kerosene that cut the light on bird’s whale–watch intuition.
With gulls, I have been custodian at the temple of Elena.
House gull–swept of anxieties,
left there clear–exposed: geometry.
Lines–along, points are places that for pause be valid.
See, how rope pulled at each end of an argument
makes to arise tension, deep fiber–filament.
The calico–kitten whom no one wants,
last one left in the cardboard–box,
Sad One sphinx–sits its acceptance of loss.
Sekhmet sent pious flies to pray ‘round the pits of equestrian eyes.
No one want it to be–gin but hor–ses are get–ting scared again.
In one wind–swept room, moths strayed from a passing plague,
drawn to an abandoned harp in the corner,
flew up to each note–point in turn.
Picked out Maneros: hymn on the strings.
You have won, consider that I would now be half
machine and half animal.
If it is a freedom, it will show you to actualizing those desires
that of no second party can collaboration be required.
The Harlequin will cease to be,
when the many, we become, in its image, free.
To the calico–kitten whom no one wants,
to the last one left in the cardboard–box:
From big cats, stars–up, you will learn to talk.
A freedom will make of you a lone dancing–figure
pulled by the North Star to the Great Bear’s hot plate.
The calico kitten was returned to the box.
Yellow–tape tied to a signal its loss.
If it is a freedom, you will not miss it,
the ones that do not mock or limit anyone–else’s.
Shadow the translucent bear lost when he was charging,
now runs the Tundra, isolated.
Ice–below are floors of sea
and mollusk–walls who let them be.
Bear without his shadow, on pearls–pastel stands:
Arctic’s iridescent sand.
Let to the Boreas wind, conjoined the poles a kite:
the Southern Cross.
The Paper–Boat Navy
Bright, ‘round the upper branches of the sapling–Malus,
a maypole’s leftover ribbon.
Alleys wear thistles; the grass, blossom of weed,
the birch–grove wears nettles, dan–de–lion mead.
Mechanical pollinators flew their hum through cultivated lavender,
behind the low light–wood lattice.
Butterfly–catching was an outlawed practice.
It is the age of gold, have you not heard?
Through the grass, from edge’s nettles,
steady in miniature up the lawn of our castle,
two white oxen pulled a toy cart with flowers.
Sylvia Oriente Horricks 