general.template

i.

Mary in Clifton Park beside a crepe myrtle:
her capacity for heartache, her lack of self-
consciousness: I'm humbled. Mary riding

a riptide of tears, dancer on a browning landscape,
goddess of joy, arrow lodged in her spine,
drunk on disappointment. Is she real?--composite

of electricity and clay, personality suspended,
spirit unfettered by comfort or routine. It's iconic,
hair blown back in the autumnal wind, masks

crumpled at her feet, dirt on her cheeks, eyes
rolling skyward--unafraid, unabashed, audacious:
Mary, yes, but something more, something

other, shrouded in mystery, tapped by the divine.

vi.

Mary, you transcend my attempts to define you, yet I persist:
forgive this twisted reflex, bizarre need to tear something infinite
into bite-sized hors d'oeuvres: that you are this, you are that.

But then you're a lioness growling on a hilltop, a tortoise
inching across a highway, a child, a crone, a tulip tree
blossoming in December. You're a lotus floating in your own

third eye, witch of May robed in leaves and sap, spring itself
born of your felicity. I'm drunk, Mary, stumbling through
begonias, mumbling in the ivy. Must this pass?--our summers

swallowed by soil and sea? Tonight I'm a viper with a human heart,
coiled in the embers of my history, swallowing compulsions
beneath a radiant sky. I slithered through lifetimes to find you,

Mary, mercurial-Athena, chameleon-Venus, my cosmopolitan gal.

vii.

Today Mary's world is cracked, and she struggles
to speak of an absence sharper than nightfall.
The Gypsy Moth flutters against the screen, wind howls

through the pine trees. I adore her, the knife-cut
across her chest, the way she paces the floor at 2 am,
rummaging in the sofa of the sky for loose change.

Faith is a difficult birth; no map gets her from the desert
to the sea; the weathervane is broken, the thorn relentless.
Joy, her native tongue, seems alien. Nine o'clock, she

has dinner with a friend: linguini and a glass of Chardonnay.
I miss her as the marlin misses the eagle. Gravity persists,
implacable bureaucrat. The planets pace until dawn,

babbling to themselves. Some days you just write off.

viii.

Upstairs Mary’s phone rings; I hear her muffled voice
through the ceiling. I climb to the second floor, bring
offerings of decaf and apple slices, read headlines to her

as she unpacks boxes. Life is a sperm shooting across
a womb of time, hunting the egg of possibility. Mortal will
rides bareback on a current of karma, something eternal

midwiving our choices. Mary plants clematis and bougainvillea.
I’m writing ballads on a ’71 Gibson. We’re purchasing
mulch, two tons of soil. We’re collecting ripe moments,

rushing towards death, changing our names each day,
dawn as lush as a boxwood maze. Lightning on the horizon.
Yellow irises. The amaryllis with its cartoon-blooms. Look,

Mary, our blessings, they hang in the air like dragonflies.

John Amen is the author of two collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003) and More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and has released one folk/folk rock CD, All I’ll Never Need (Cool Midget 2004). His second CD, Ridiculous Empire, will be released in Fall 2007. Further information is available on his website and myspace page. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine.

Donna Dixon "Makonde"

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