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Editor's
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Two Poems
by
Phoebe Wilcox
The
Mountain Wears Down
I.
Water rides over rock for millions of years.
How long does it take
for a waterfall to wear the stone heart
of the mountain down?
II.
I
misplaced my mind, a practical little purse rattling with brittle
to-do lists.
No one would have known what to do with it
if they’d found it, like a gourd, a husk,
an
embroidered accessory, an elaborately concocted neural
knick-knack
stuffed with ideas about who I was supposed to be
at that particular time of my life. Personality attributes
like shopping errands, dreams reduced to coinage. The
dreams
had made change of themselves in order to pay the
check. From a spiritual point of view they still
had the same value but I was having a heck of a time
trying
to add it all up so that I didn’t feel cheated. I was
never good at math.
And then the nymph came
singing like a breeze,
singing to me that she
was the
real dream,
the supreme dream,
and she gently bade me do
her will.
Nymphs maintain themselves on blades of
grass
and flower nectar.
When she took me away
—for
a brief hiatus—
(That nymph who had eyes like dewdrops
with the world reflected.)
When she took me away
and
clothed me
in her mist and quartz
and made my mind, my
body, my heart, my soul
mimic all the symptoms of love
as though it were real
as though elation was our destined
place,
when she bent me, sweet and cajoling, to her will,
forced me to my knees
and up, and down, and up, and down,
and up, and down
like her myth was tainted with Catholicism
and my mouth knew Eucharistic secrets
and until my knees
were reddened with prayers and pornography,
well, I grew
weak.
I hadn’t eaten anything substantive for days and
days,
nothing but sugar light sifted through trees,
or a
rose bud here and there.
She forced me on the bus,
gently as was her way,
her hand pushing at the small of my
back, the rhomboid of Venus,
and with my eyes love-cloudy and
my heart imprisoned,
well, the only thing I knew for sure
as
I sat like a mist in my seat
was that I was all up for grabs.
I didn’t know I was too ethereal to touch.
I stepped out of the bus into a snowy land of cold
white feathers
And, as it turned out
I
hardly
knew
how my love would be made counterfeit and
blood-stained.
Maybe
Sometimes Never
Only.
Did I leave it on a bus seat?
No.
No, the bus was driven by an overweight,
desperately lonely driver. He would have checked the
seats. No, it was the nymph, that sweet girl dancing on an
eyelash of sky.
I left it with her. She’s
the one who coaxes the water over stone. She’s the
one
who dances in a flurry of May petals.
I squeezed his hand briefly, the bus driver’s.
I understood. There was snow everywhere, piled on my heart.
I stepped out of the bus into a snowy land of cold
feathers
And, as it turned out
I
hardly
knew
how heavy time was
or that I could
carry it so far.
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A
More Significant Sun
I
nestle beneath the covers, hands on your chest, and pray
that
you keep me tethered.
There was a time when
I dug my fingers into the mane of my pony,
ducked my face
into its neck
and galloped,
swiftly, recklessly into a dream,
jarring my
teeth, jaws snapping together in the landing, the barely-made
leap over the silver rag of water
running turbulent
between two worlds.
I came to that lovely land,
longingly, into dangerous blooms.
Now I want to
stay with you where I am safe,
don’t I?
Or…shall I go?
The pony stamps her hoof,
paws the dirt and snorts warm
grassy breath.
We could leave
you calling for me from the
other side.
I wouldn’t hear you,
not with an
aria of an angel’s song luring me away.
Not with
their hands leading me through the ferns, into the long-awaited,
seduction of blood-red bleeding hearts,
where I would stray that bright day with the sun
slipping its knife in
to open me like a letter sent secretly.
Let me
correspond with a universe of pain and ecstasy there alone,
safe
from
those
worldly things that kept coming and coming and coming
over
me. An angel
will unburden me
unwind my binding human clothing.
Dazed from the long
journey,
I’d collapse into his white satin robe,
his
bird-like wing against my cheek.
Green moss,
a million microscopic hands pressing,
all
of it draped in gauze light of a deeper, golder, more significant
sun.
How does
such a significant light shined by such a secondary sun shine?
It is a truer light than the sun I once knew?
Is
this angel, this sun, all in sweet disguise? The sensation
of elation, prodigal pleasure, body arching in a state sublime…
Where am I, where am I, where is this, where am I?
From tremulous pink corollas and scepter-like capitula, I
dined on nectar,
weak and drunk, rescued and drowning, pulsed
into a psychic kiss,
sugar-light and fathoms-dark.
Where am I, where am I, where is this, where am I?
And the Mystery returns:
You have been
set free. You have consummated your relationship with the
night. You are like the satin lining of the sky
turned
on.
You can come.
You can go.
But you
cannot coexist, heart-cleaved, in both places; you must live
in
one place or the other. Gallop your little pony away…
and you will miss the sweet music, the sweet nectar, the
sweet bloom
of new color, when you go.
You will miss it, yes you will, when you return
to your secondary joys and pains,
your diurnal ordinary,
your simple sunny kitchen
with its simple,
everyday
sun.
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