The Portal
September 23, 2000
Lingering beneath the eye
of the Harvest Moon,
I can't help but think of going soon,
and my tears thread silver
laces down my cheek.
I might have never gone this way,
but having stumbled in one day
I find myself so lost, and found,
and firmly grounded.
I know the smell of your bakeries,
your tea time afternoons.
I even trade in the market there.
The little girl with chestnut hair
sells flowers for a dime.
I buy enough, so that she has time
for an ice cream on her way home.
A fine way to spend your pay, I think.
I walk along the streets,
on which a drizzle falls this afternoon.
Spicy orange pekoe tea, I'm sure of it.
It smells too good to be rain.
The air is biting
but I make my walk anyway...
along the half-dozen residential streets,
listening to the mothers calling,
"come and eat,"
causing tiny feet to clatter up steps
and rush across porches.
They fan the hearts of
so many winking jack-o-lanterns there.
I am stirred as well,
all hollowed out and
grinning at the world;
(though the edges of my smile
have curled
in the damp night air.)
Of course, they take no notice.
I am but a girl
with flowers in hand,
roaming a land that is not my own.
"It is not anyone's," I concede,
and I find it easier to leave
as I shed the husk of my former sadness.
I have bristled
and braced myself
in accommodation.
Slings and arrows
be damned...
this is my destiny.
Fall against me, glitter
and gleam there belly-up
in the noonday sun.
It's quite fun to bang your head
against the rock,
but I wouldn't know--
I have always been the rock.
Scratch a trail, sleek and black,
down my back and deeper still.
Tune your instruments
and prepare for battle.
Words hurt just as much,
so use them.
I am Bellona, come to
lead you to victory.
Where roads of love and war
and conscience merge,
I am there, on the verge
of giving all but showing nothing.
My arms point in all directions,
so you must decide for yourself--
whether to follow me
or approach the deity
with unflinching intent.
Come forth and take my hand.
Seek refuge in my sad
but steadfast strength.
Lean against me until you
grow weary of my hard stone face.
What light within cannot erase
the hard lines,
marble-cool
and expressionless.
I am as granite, you see, not talc,
and lucky for you
my pain is only skin deep and fleeting.
Settling into a high-back leather chair
I look out across the dewy grass,
but farther still.
Just beyond my windowsill
lies a world anew.
I do hope you see it too.
Stretching out a thin arm, I catch moonlight
in my hand. It lingers there, then slips
through closed fingers,
much too fast for me to see.
It falls into an open-mouthed universe,
and I let it be.
Such is my mood tonight--carefree and reckless--
playing in the starlight of an after dinner wine,
fingering the air with apropos abandon.
I can give up what isn't mine. I know that now.
In the outer room they come and go, but they
do not know of me. I am safely tucked away
within myself, around my books,
avoiding looks and swells of your
aristocratic head.
"Oh but aren't you looking well!" you would say,
though in truth I am walking dead.
Tilt my head; lift my eyes like a child,
sending praise in silent offering;
sinking deep into the velvety folds of Heaven
(or merely earth; I am not sure yet.)
The time will come when I will have the answers,
but it will be too late to share them.
You must learn to make do with
the pipe dreams and late night visions
of an ancient whose time has come.
The twinkling flecks of silver luminosity impose,
transpose, then dispose of the trappings of my
former self. "But they are old," I tell myself,
"and long dead. Their light is but a ghost!"
In my soul I don't believe it.
They look as though
they're rushing forth,
coming to claim the last of us.
I might have reached out to take your hand,
held it tight as we fell into
that black night together;
but you aren't here.
I'm not quite sure that I am here
until the slight weight of Shakespeare
settles on my lap.
My volume, worn and dog-eared but without dust,
falls open to another yellow page.
'What light through yonder window breaks...'?
[The dear heart must read my mind.]
"A thousand souls looking in," I answer.
He seems satiated, for no more is heard
from him as I close the cover.
You might think I'm mad,
for I hear voices and dream dreams,
but all is not as it seems.
In truth I am a lone traveler on a white horse,
selling snake oil to the old ones here.
When business wanes I will move on,
having saved everyone I can...
but not tonight. Darkness storms in like
a reckoning, beckoning me to come with it,
into that place I know so well
but can never remember.
I relish my last moments of lucidity,
cherishing the memory of another cold
December evening, feeling old but
having told the length of all my meanings.
My words
are sometimes sad
but never ritual.
I speak
out of soulful urgency.
I love
and this is
how I show it;
[yet I am no poet,
nor profess to be.]
My words
are my song to the world--
loud and
a little off key,
but just enough
to make you smile.
My words
fall forward
like a summer day,
keeping all the
dread at bay;
rising like a kite
on the winds
of another time.
I cut the string
and let them soar:
once spoken
they are mine no more.
My words
are my gift to you.
I was here
when the soft and mellow morning
unwrapped its present, just for me.
A shower of sunshine ribbons
and blue-sky wrapping paper fell away
and no one seemed to notice.
I was here
when the pigeons gathered for breakfast,
rudely interrupted by a little girl
in clicky dress-up shoes.
Her eyes had shone like sapphires
in the early morning sun.
I was here
when the busy ones went to work,
looking straight ahead and
rushing about their way,
grappling for the brass ring
that doesn't even exist.
They wore clicky dress-up shoes, too.
I was here
when the old woman in the violet overcoat
dropped her change purse in the gutter.
It didn't seem to bother her, though,
she just picked it up and walked on.
The old ones are like that, you know.
I was here
when a young woman
settled beside the fountain,
reading a book of long ago.
No man or woman
looked at her but me.
I thought she was beautiful.
As the day takes down its shingle,
I am here, taking careful notev
of all I've seen. The dreams I dream
tonight will be simple, soft and light;
filled with all the things
I've witnessed here.
I find my love in each of you,
but never interfere.
It is sliding like a summer day,
lazy and unassuming--
settling along my feet
and up the length of me.
the knowledge of you is a welcome imposition.
Is it so bad that I love you?
That my heart is all done up in a bow,
because you made it so with your kind
and improper maneuverings?
Do it again, only without the school boy guilt.
It is decidedly delicious, you and Iv
and what we accomplish...
the secret little folds of love and trust
and thought and lust
and all the goody in the middle.
I have never had enough,
but I needn't want for long.
You don't keep me waiting.
Your smooth and decisive hands
anchor me in reality
(though it's hard, when you smite me
with your brazen gaze.)
In short I am amazed at the beauty you possess.
My tongue is wrapped up and twisted
at the sight of you,
shadows of a moonlit ocean
shimmering over your form.
Dark skin platinum and pristine...
and all for me.
You don't keep me waiting
as I gape, slack-jawed and eager.
Fuse with me my destiny
and erase all doubt and fear,
the moment you are near.
Guarded as the day is long,
I sit in a crystal room of sob and sorrow,
waiting for the morrow,
when the black sun will spill over the sharp
and shiny shards of my undoing.
Silently you approach, but go no further.
"Noli me tangere," I say,
for I am a wall of fire
spewing the caustic venom
of a thousand troubled souls.
I want their stories told, if only to myself.
Come; stretch out the
pearly columns of your fingers.
Let me kiss them, one by one.
I'll bend low into the dusty daylight
and blow kisses of blessing across your palm.
If I can't calm your sordid sea,
then there is no more use for me.
My magic is in martyrdom,
and I need your burden too.
Do not be afraid, my child,
I am but the fantasy you fashioned
to keep you warm through the winter.
Your expectations might splinter
but all is not lost. I'll give you
what you need, at a cost.
I'll make you whole again,
but first you have to let me in.
Lead me down your long, dark corridor.
I'll make it more than worth your while
if you relinquish all you're hiding.
I'll eat up your hopelessness bit by bit.
You'll be washed anew,
and I will smile
and think of you
as I toss another soul
into the boiling cauldron of my spirit.
I walked along the road today,
red dust clawing at my ankles,
settling around the nail bed of my open toes.
I am not alone, though,
for ahead I see a boy,
a rather filthy young thing
with a baseball glove,
coming home from the Big Game.
Dusty cheeks and a fresh bruise make him real,
although everything is not as it seems lately.
The sky is awash in mellow gold light,
falling upon the flecks of dirt in his hair,
his untied laces.
I want to take him home and mother him,
but instead I speak.
"Did you win the game, my dear?
You played hard, no doubt."
He looks at his hands and then at me.
He is a felled warrior, I concede,
for there is no boyish sparkle there.
When he speaks I shudder, his voice
wrought with wisdom and understanding.
"It is not the game at all," he whispers,
"or even if you play. Pay attention to
every moment, and the end won't matter."
In an instant I know the child has seen
what others may never view...
the shining face of noble Truth.
I tremble in admiration
as I numbly ask the question:
"Yes, but what does that mean for me?"
Large eyes look back at me
and consider before answering.
"Read the box scores,"
he says simply, and my heart
unravels thread by thread.
I lift my head but no matter--
he is gone.
And I go too, being just the same but
somehow changed by my walk along the road.
The sky rained wonder and light
in the shape of a boy
and I was allowed to see it.
In a field of unforgiving,
unrelenting sorrow swept
over the land--
but passed me by.
I cannot tell you why,
only that I am grateful.
In its place is thought pursuing--
my lust for life will be my undoing,
yet it is knowledge that I seek.
Wind within me stirs desire,
causing my soul to speak.
I know not where the storm clouds go
when the rain has settled on the mire--
they seem to fade away...
a dark gray and glorious apparition.
In my condition
I can only wonder why.
I want to think,
and love and thrive.
I'll dip my brush a hundred times
and paint a rainbow in the sky.
My heart petitions
me to stop, but I cannot.
I am hungry for knowledge;
little nuggets of truth
I've known were there,
but never bothered asking where
or how to find them.
I can only pray it's not too late to learn--
and to burn their truth within my soul.
©Brandi Clark
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