Seven Little Poems in the Light
by
Radiance Angelina Petro
I am not interested in the pretense
of respectability. I see no reason
to put away childish things. Everything
is incubation anyway, and even Dionysus
played with toys.
***
Go ahead, look for what leaves the body
at death. You’ll find a child in a sun-lit field
singing, making flower crowns
for lions and lambs.
***
The masts of the trees guide the turning
of the earth. Follow the edge of the night.
The absence of shoreline creates something
immense, like a celestial agriculture
of countless stars.
***
The doctrines of the day are no longer
needed. Everything is a cipher anyways,
and you cannot flatter death by trying
to sort them out. Every child is a bird,
and unlike the deer, the soul wants to be found.
***
The crow lifted suddenly from the side of the road,
looking as if it was going to fly in front of my car,
but, instead, it banked left, and flew back into the field.
***
All heartbeats are given, and everything is the source
of everything, and everything is amenable to desire,
and the magic of farming, the magic of bridges,
and every pelican and salamander, every manta ray,
and cuttlefish amazes even the angels.
***
When we met, you broke the hour-glass
of my life and gently poured the sand
onto the center of a Chladni plate.
Then you took the violin bow, drew it along the edge,
and the sand suddenly began to lift
and dance and quiver, and all at once–
rush towards the edges, forming visible
sound-shapes, and then it settled back
in a restful sigh of bliss.