A JAGGED LINE

Daniel Lee

Swing low and bury me under the weight of your wingspan, the silhouette of your form against the sun

Swinging low and letting whip the sunlit flames of my hair, golden tongues stretching out to taste you

Reaching up to taste you, smell you

The wet scent of your jungle

The deep humidity of your southern gulf, the hot Dominican rain of your mouth.

Now see widen the stormclouds over Heaven,

Swing low and carry me there in time to see it fall

The heavy flapping of your feathers lifting me higher, higher, higher

Until the silver lining of any cloud becomes black as an Alaskan winter

And the snow on your wings grows cold and freezes

And, solid as stone, immovable as Doryphoros,

You plummet to the world far below

eyes sad behind ice

Still dreaming, yet trapped in stone

A life in statue.

And that is when, as you draw near the jagged line of planet Earth,

And as glass you are about to shatter across the face of the mountain,

That I will swing low,

Grab hold of you tight, carry you high, high into the opaque white oblivion

Far away from the marrow of the scratched bone

It sits alone in the desert

Waiting for the flood to swallow it up, crack it open, suck out its insides.

Stationary themselves, nearby sit the desert coyotes

Eyes downcast at the bone, at the skeleton entire, a whale,

A fallen angel.

We are all of us whales,

Beached upon an unending shore, alone in a desert, waiting for a flood to come

and carry us home.