Monday, June 1, 2020

Michael T. Smith writes


Upon August’s Slumped Back

Upon August’s slumped back
the weight of the previous year
bends his crooked spine
with tender years.
And with this timely scoliosis,
his abject form
welcomes the wind unassuming,
a midnight guest
wandering like a mischievous child,
who comes to steal
what it wills
as the household goes off to bed,
windows open,
with a peace of being from nature’s massage;
and as in a bag,
my thoughts westward go,
like this fickle air,
to the drawn map’s end;
nobody knows
of the wind wrapped round
my pinky finger.
I hold it so tightly,
but now let it go, never to linger,
ever to dance with Astraeus,
as with a stranger sans affection.
For in this season,
the coffers are packed to the brim
with rare objects and predictions grim,
such are
conversations with my friend,
my mind,
in these confines
the size
of a mumble,
spanking the new-born hours into a cry
to wake the turn of Seasons,
who die.
The night’s cold has passing silent
escaped
like wards of a jail
for familial violence;
seasons, like the rejected bit of a song,
kill the following strain --
with strain in strain and by strain.
It’s a pledge to the darkness
of time fallen
outside our doors.

1 comment:

  1. Hesiodos described Aestraeus (Astraios, "starry") as a descendant of Kreios ("ram;" Aries is the 1st visible constellation in the spring and marked the start of the new year in the ancient Greek calendar) and Eurybia ("wide-force"), the goddess of mastery of the seas and especially external factors like the winds or rising of the constellations. But Hyginus referred to him as one of the Gigantes, the son of Tartaros (a deity of the underworld0 and Gaia (Earth). As god of the dusk, he married Eos, the Dawn, and they were the parents of the 4 Anemoi ("Winds") and the 5 Astra Planeta ("Wandering Stars", or planets Phainon [Saturn], Phaethon [Jupiter], Pyroeis [Mars], Eosphoros/Hesperos [Venus], and Stilbon [Mercury]). Their daughter Astraea was the goddess of innocence and justice.

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