errol miller
New Rain
Exiting
the silvery night of life, old wounds
sparkle like silver, they
are simply body-bruises collected
from the crossing, and there was love
and another larger body
and a yellow wooden pencil
to transcribe in eternal black and white
all the fields of waving wheat mean nothing
in the halfbreed heartland of the future
in the salt marshes along the bayous of the sea
a cleaner wind is blowing in from Somewhere
anointing the martyred bones
and mortared crosses of wormwood tenants
with stony oyster-silence, in
the pale flickering flares
of the campfires of the dead
a new blue way emerges
washed by tidal waves from Atlantis
folded into milky children born again
under assorted star-signs, it
is here in the dark silt of level ground
in the whine of the green turnstile
in the ashes tossed upon the sea
it is here in the burial and the resurrection
under the crescent moon of a drifting seacoast
in the lapwings of a thrusting nightbird
held captive too
by the polar crush of dying, give
me the reincarnated wind to drift into
wet circular slips of sand beaded
with miles and miles of sun and tourists
let me fall like a damn fool
beside the fish
in their scrubbed spring of oasis, I
seem to recall a cool clean loveliness
from another distant shore, framed in a photograph
where now a blank-voiced siren rests.
