Wednesday 5 July 2017

The Willie Wag Tail and the Goldfish



They met
 beneath a half moon summer,
she the free fool, a Willie Wagtail,
thirsty, surprised to hear
 the large wineglass surface speak
 in a deathlike whisper;

“Please,
 eat me, O angel of light and death.”
And there was double the surprise,
 for he was an angel of light and death himself,
 a moon lit golden fish, an orb like gift…
“My human gods have abandoned me,
 why do you hesitate?”
“I do not eat angels like you,
 it would be a sin against the animals…”

And art that the only beauty?
No, they could each take no more
and swam and flew to the depths
 of their despair, each gasping their
 light to hideously defining shadow…

A world passed,
yet there was still none like that surface.
To her, the water’s voice was just like
 her own air-free-heart yet filled with
 a completed miracle…

And so she returned.
And only to an orange and still thing.
And only to her leap of a world bridge faith,
 a piercing, a kiss-full ripple of the sky breath
and dropped crushed soft abdomen
 of silver moth left over from her children.
Yes, it worked for a while,
 love began to move,
Slowly,
rising and descending.

Each day
 he glimpsed her god and gasped her in,
Gifting her sips of his waters poetry as she
perched upon the rim. And then her children,
they grew and drank the same and he gifted gladly,
 for they grew wise and bold and he laughed bubbles
 at their wise remarks.

 And love was love for a while.
 And so powerful in tides of the storms
and the sky blue wonder. And so powerful
 because it was the end of the world
 when that wonder began to win.
At last a great drought ended too late
on a crescent waning moon…

When they all fell in around him
 there was one fifth left,
there was unmeasured sipping guilt
 and their eyes half submerged
with his last metaphor escaping.
And yet there was a feeling,
like each to their own leaping,
 a world bridge,
their own
kiss-full ripple
of the sky breath
returning…

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