Arcturus setting last night, over the roof of the garage; the Sickle sweeping endlessly backwards; a mist rising from the streets. Vega so directly overhead that looking up at her, and turning to orient myself to the Summer Triangle, gave me vertigo. The desire for something afar / from the sphere of our sorrow.
All the things that tumble up out of the ground, or out of strollers, and take their improbable places as earthly powers, for a little bit, before they tumble down again.
Leaves going yellow. There will be floods and blockages where there were fires: detritus coming down the rivers, muddy water in the streets. But above the dirty clouds and the ruined air there are still stars.
Every morning I lie on my little Persian carpet on the concrete floor, and lay my hands on my ribs, which are gradually rising, like the basalt circles on the beach when a rough winter comes and the sand is washing away. Like that.
Ribs and hands, sets of little bones in parallel, go instinctively to each other, and play little mathematical games. With five and twelve you can do anything, anything at all.
2 comments:
Wow, I just realized that I've had the sickle/scythe/big dipper thing totally mixed up in my mind for fifty years. As a sickle, it works just fine. The handle is the bowl of the dipper, the blade is the dipper's handle, and it goes counterclockwise around the pole star, cutting-edge first, the blade describing a wider arc than the handle, just as it should. When I first learned the constellations, though, I didn't really know the difference between a sickle and scythe, and I had the notion that the handle of the dipper HAD to be the handle, so I pictured a scythe, which of course was going the wrong way, and was turning by the point, which is very wrong. But of course it was no wronger than a bear (seriously? a BEAR?) so I just rolled with it. Till now.
This is a lovely prose poem in its own right anyway, Dale!
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