String of Knots
Jay Sheets
In the burnt-ivory morning air, an ensouled plume
inks the sky from the chimney of a stone crematory
on a hill in the woods. Once a fragile container
of memories to come, now an obsidian crest
to the knowable world—a lumpy, decanted
moment—how time appears as change
appears. In my mind, tucked safe, I think—
I will not be this augury to a future
poet, no—I’ll be a sapphire vessel
transcending the sense-world that only exists
because it once was versed, once was imaged
like a tortoise shell full of proverbs or foxglove
in orange-vanilla nightfall. Myself—a black ox,
perhaps, awakened to every thing—awakened
to how a gull feather folds over to white on a foamy
shore as a hermeneutic fish chokes while no one
is watching. Or maybe I’m a stitcher of olive branches—
a magician with a nightingale on a string of knots
& a lover’s perfumed linen note tucked square
in a red handsewn pocket who ponders why,
as we age, we rinse our straw clean.
I imagine this smoke—once a man, or woman,
or child even, with dimples—& watch as he,
she, or the little one touches the dawn high
as snowflakes poke through the sooty vestige
of what it means to be human & I wonder if I,
or anyone I know, should be so lucky & I light
a new fire at the end of myself.