Heart's Gloriole

HEART'S GLORIOLE

Once in a darkened dining room,
surrounded by oaken antiques
and numerous ticking clocks,
an old woman sat,
not looking at me,
in a mystical psychic's trance,
murmuring
that I had lived many times
before
in Wales and Scotland,
as a lord and warrior,
a great leader
in one rebellion after another;
and I so wanted it
to be true.

Because
sometimes when I stare
into a winter sky
full of stars,
or into the heart of flames,
a genetic imp spreads
sense images
across the cortical vastness
within my skull,
scrolling vivid details
that my occipital lobe
sends to my trembling retina
as images
of moors and lochs and heather
and tarter kilts
and blades and shields of leather,
and cattle with long fur,
and black beaches,
and cold grey deep water.

But something new,
now at night,
shimmers into the dreams
of light
within my fevered mind;
you appear glorious;
on horseback,
and on foot,
sometimes blond and pale,
sometimes brunette and dark,
with a Germanic-Nordic bearing;
and always as
a Lady,
or princess,
or baroness,
or queen,
whose favor I have won,
or will win;
whose body I will conquor,
whose soaring spirit
I will share,
and whose love I will,
Gloria Patri,
receive.

You also appear in modern dress,
with your reddish-blond curls flapping
like silken banners,
as your orange MGB
with its top down,
slides smoothly across
the polished porcelain
of my heart,
sticking to the corners
as you shift expertly
through the gears
and the years;
piercing the gloom
with the well-tuned pitch
of its perfect pipes;
driving
like you make love,
like you make music,
Gloria Madre,
manipulating that marvelous machine
skillfully and passionately.

You appear
in sunlight and in shadow,
brazen and mysterious,
coarsing through my cortex,
fusing the turgid flow of time,
fleshing out every flaxen moment,
becoming the counterpoint
to every beat
of memory's metronome.

Lady,
when you are in my arms,
time is arrested,
and even pain
is enert.

I certainly realize
that you are
more than a magnificent apparition,
more than a tart treacle
of the honied past,
more than the lonely lover
of my feverous dreams;
you are
actually,
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
there.

When you gaze into my eyes,
grasping me tightly
with your tenderness,
I feel
the steam of blood splashing
through my open capillaries,
laden with the sweet recall
of your manifold guises,
and of the dozens of instances
that I had won your heart
before,
in other lands,
in other centuries;
all connected
through the fleshy fabric of Time
like the gloriac cloth
held ever so softly
over my face.

Thank-you,
my love,
for now I know
why I am alive,
and what I have to do.


Glenn Buttkus March 1988