September 2019
Bionote: Here is a taste of my "Speech Scroll." Around the turn of the year I set out to write a long poem in eighteen-line sections. It has grown beyond a hundred of them by now, and although I set out with no specific themes I anticipated getting many a start from looking out of the window and around the house, where vistas invariably led me to greater issues. Certain themes resurface, and I'm sending three sections from around the middle of what I have to date.
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Speech Scroll
(106) The sky’s lonely emperor signals for another day to begin and his armies raise the sun to its place on the horizon. He’s had a quiet night, feeding starlight to coyotes, now he stokes the fires that bring on summer’s heat. It’s very much a game to him, setting record highs for certain dates: one hundred and nine, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and brimstone. He sometimes sends a whiplash of lightning just to tease the Earth and promise storms only to withhold them while he courts solitude with his only company the lion he leads through Heaven on a leash. (107) When the sun’s light travels the last of its ninety-three million miles it slows to the pace of eyesight, as desert mystics gaze into the heat to search for meaning. It is so quiet among aging rocks they can hear thoughts moving through their minds: anger scraping against the cranium and resignation settling in the cerebellum. They have come to sweat away special offers and their side effects, come to find large answers to the little questions that keep snapping at their heels while leaving it to others to ask why, if God exists, evil sings its endless jingle. (108) There’s a moment early in the day a dove sits on the street lamp two doors down and watches how the four peaks to the east shift to make room for the sun. The closer mountain breaks into a rosy smile as the light touches down on its stony complexion and word comes from its other side that today being Sunday no deals will be made; interest rates and rent remain as they were; the papers awaiting a signature lie cold in a drawer; and faith and doubt sit down together in a church for air conditioned souls. |
© 2019 David Chorlton
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