Elephant’s Karma
When a poacher loves the elephant,
she remembers, she is equipped to forgive.
Sprung up split–shoots yield to footprints that crush earth
and concave crowns to her path.
The matter she milled into pulp on her way
receives light dusk will print on her step–forest days.
The mechanical elephant, Karma
lumbers the mountains, invisible.
In fields, a way to be a farmhand
is a hand for handing arm in —
to return hands to fields,
to return fields to agriculture.
Plans to learn–to–talk again,
the school needed a teacher.
To return where logic lives
and children, the last abstract thinkers.
Turtles, old as time and wild horses.
The conservation society held a meeting.
From tree–shade in headquarters’ ruins, was put out a call
for man adept at speaking with the lions.
Sound wove its ribbon ‘round a run of palms.
At the conservation society, Sun moved meeting’s dawn.
The lion interpreter stepped Sundown, up palms.
King Ancestors
Artisan before the guild window, arms open,
releases his work.
They have finally invented mechanical scarabs.
On a sunny, southern continent:
sand cat burrows and rose of desert.
Inevitable winds–etesian
push free–direction forwards
souls in legions of roman soldiers.
Castle, window open — his square of Milky Way.
Sparrow — come as signal — to perch a bed, the hay.
Over fields of sunshines gone to seed
herds march the walk of their breed.
Hathor lets livestock safely sky–step,
beyond lions’ valley–play.
All of ox parade reign’s recorded–floods
and fore their brows to drink the East
when Sun has see the day.
Passer–genus, roost–alights off sprig of hay.
Chance
There is a jacket of kid leather.
It is book of stillborn, two–headed verses’ cover —
compiled by Little Bo–Peep
who reads it wave–rhythm, aloud from the Greek.
To moonlight–birthing, guided her flock
but could not keep souls that she lost.
Bear–cub does not hatch of egg, you know.
Pursued them to the reaches of desperation
that ran out as far as she lived to let them.
Staff–walked through verses on half things and thoughts.
At the Styx, built a cairn of volcanic rock.
Fuel from distance that formed it was bargain to cross.
When fireflies were to few,
stars fell down to Rome, their supply to renew.
It meets face–to–face with its variables–x,
chance is a machine of mobile parts,
crosses way of the clubs and the tao of some hearts.
At chapter of Moon Act, Lilith opened the scene.
The fable obstructed by blue shade of queen.
There were gems on the ground mounted–Galilee,
someone though had kept the chain.
There were vines and grapes by bunches.
The Nile green–shimmered in kaki–patches.
Bored in the heat, folded pages to a tower–magdalese.
Slept–feral in graveyards without her sheep.
On pyrolatry’s mantel,
electric–fire, pyromania had granted a permit to wire.
In a glass cabinet at Hell’s aviary
are the peahen’s tiara and tape–cassettes of canary.
Prince face of triangle, he is doing the rounds,
to see what bird hatches down on red–light–grounds.
She amplified, in a dream, his drummer’s part–purcussion.
Brother,
we have been as swans together.
He is confident quoting Rimpoche,
says a sky–lord and the lordships spawn the reasons to pray.
In the dark, they made plans —
when his pebble’s throw sounded off her stone shepherdess’ bed —
to open a butterfly sanctuary after war’s end.
Would later put last–nail to rail’s final–tie,
holding hammer for the first and last time.
Duat is realizing at high–gate, that you would be locked in
and you are another limit–gate too,
locked out simultaneously.
Lepidoptera,
Sekhmet, in a late–Spring, bloodshed–meadow,
calves to thighs side–folded,
been left standing by Apollo.
Humanity was as a butterfly,
standing on a base for its landing
and Sekhmet, despair wearing face–lion.
Ave,
Lepidoptera.
Sylvia Oriente Horricks 