An End, Thus a Beginning

Painting by Michael McDyer


AN END, THUS A BEGINNING

A renewal,
The rosy dove returned
With a fragment
Of a sweet-pea vine wrapped around her leg,
Under her knee, a pink bloom.

This blue-jay day started as an acute angle,
With Circe’s song spinning in my ears,
Changed
By the sight of gourds
Into an awkward circle
Whose
Circumference
still retrained
in the resumption
The bumpy curve
Of an aged, marred, angelic burlesque dancer.

Euclid stepped out into this wind,
His sleeves flopped.

Queasy. I stayed among the caravans of leaves
Gazing at their cargoes, the eggs of cardinals.

Trenches were dug by moles in the garden
As if it were to be a settling for battle scenes
In a World War I movie. Mushroom, helmets.

Decided to spent the rest of the day outside
With wine until the moon. My life
Had been renewed, rewound on a spool.

When unwound, it will be a new thread
To weave a new reality, although the new
Thread will be knotted from being broken.


Duane Locke

Posted over on The Hold