Triptych
I.
You lie in
your bed dream-wracked. The moon-launched arrow, silver-tipped, misses its
mark. Wasted, it disappears deep into your star-washed pillow. You will not
remember. Love-crazed, I pace outside your frost-etched window. The golden candlesticks
blow over, dream-toppled, as from a memory-bladed wind. The passion-hooked bits
of debris that make a life ignite. An inferno ensues. Every haunted second is
different now. I have dreams, too.
II.
Cinders of
your dreams come falling in silence as shooting stars. Every waking second
reverberates with their hiss and pop. Wanton, you haunt the night. The Chinese
poets meditate chastely on the edge of the pond, dusted in bits of debris:
feathers, pine needles, hollow snail shells. Radiantly they stand, candlesticks
on an altar, with their beards of glowing ash and their hair aflame. The pond's
polished window reflects its depths and calls my name. I hesitate. The screams
of a circling hawk interrupt the night. He cries, “I have dreams, too,” once, twice,
thrice. You are absent. The poets say simply, “Lamps might be safer next time.”
III.
When, with
hearts aflame, the Chinese poets abandon their wheelbarrows of thunder on the
blank pages, we will know. When, beneath the pines, we sit in the forest's dogwood-snowed
beauty, we will rejoice. When, with time noticeably absent, the golden beeswax
obliterates the silver candlesticks, we will understand. When, behind a cloud
of snow geese, the trees become illegible, we will begin. When, under a
tear-misted moon, we sift through the bits of our heart's debris, we will
forgive. When, on the white pillow, every waking second is laid bare, we will
sleep. When, across the glacier-spaded valley, we see ourselves reflected in
the window of a scrub jay's eye, we will drop to our knees and cry out loud.
---Susan
Collier Lamont
Susan Collier Lamont is a social justice activist in Sonoma County, California. She is also a landscape designer, photographer and writer.
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