The Long Bright

 MOVEMENT I
 
I. THE LONG BRIGHT (1) - PROLOGUE
Do not fear the view
The long bright
 
Shattered with light
Tomorrow is scorched with life
Living on
In fractured mirrors
 
II. THE BRIDGE
I shudder not the early hint of Fall
In ripples rocking
Ships as big as islands glide
 
But the day with handsome flowers
And the pink skies over our wooden decks
Smell of wood smoke
From my window
Ships moored against a shifting dock
Make the guy wires ring
 
Church bells
Move my darting eyes across
Tethered to hope
By the rusting Bridge
 
To cross
To cross to where
The sun rises
Silently
Like the stopping of breath
 
III. RISK FACTORS
Sometimes I think
Of that one safe moment
In night’s inertia
Our gentle ignorance
 
IV. METS
Bone mets
Liver mets
Who’s got the met nets
Bad news
Good news
Who’s got the good bets
Met mets
Who’s got the medicine
Why does it hurt
What do I have
Where am I
In the continuum
Keep it mum
Who to tell
Some are fine
And some are scared
And some are nuts
Who’s got the guts?
 
V. THERE WAS A TIME
In that place that once
Was
Ours
 
We had dirt
Like chocolate cake
Broken in our hands
 
We had a horse
And goats and sheep
 
In that place there was a time
Of cauliflowers as big as planets
Irises as bright as goddesses
Nebulas of spinach green
 
And out of the early morning smoke
On cold days
The white goat appeared
Of an epic
A unicorn
Or some mythical flirt
 
In that place that once
Was ours
There was a time
Greenhouse full of shoots
Beets as sweet as flutes
Baby on our back
 
I hate to remember this
I love to forget
Cancer
 
But if it were a flower
There must be beauty in all growth
In all growth
There must be death
 
And if it were a flower
Or a beautiful resplendent gourd
There must be beauty in all growth
In that place that once
Was
Ours
 
MOVEMENT II
 
VI. THE LONG BRIGHT (2)
Do not fear the view
The long bright
 
See how patiently
On the rock beach
The sunset lingers
Where lime canopies are
On fire with hot frost
And caressing you
With flaxen fingers
Are the whitecaps in relief
On the silver-bellied lake
You just now crossed
 
VII. MELISMA
How can I confess the notes I’ve heard
 
I was there when she started
It is the quiet now I cannot hear
That came like storms
To devastate the gardens
That were her songs
 
But what is sound and long ago?
Where do echoes die?
She must be still singing
As I am listening
 
VIII. THE WOLF
The wolf sits
On a hill panting
Gray and thin and erect
Watching for the weak
 
I trust animals
And storms
 
All my wizardry
Gone
I am malignancy itself
 
The Titanic veered
To avoid ice
And was torn
And drowned
 
IX. GOOD DAYS BAD DAYS
Good days bad days
What about a rest hey?
Which me what I
Never know the feel how
Up one down two
Can I have a straight run?
Warm me sun ray
Never have the same fun
Up there down here
Isn’t there a flip side?
Deep slide slow slide
When’s it going to break me?
Black sky white sigh
Who has got the safe key?
Time’s here hours short
 
X. BLOOM
Flowers are to be watched
The instantaneity of
Their gaudy sloth
If I could so cease
I would not be closer
To the puzzle
To finding that last piece
 
It is a lesson
Painfully to be won
There is a choice
To be ecstatic
Or to return
To take or to subsume
So involuntarily do
I repent and bloom
 
XI. THE LONG BRIGHT (3) - EPILOGUE
At that moment
Iridescent time
Never can be taken
From your ownership as
Brushes stroke the sky and
In abounding chants sing strong
 
I lift up my eyes
And I seek salvation
Come unto the Lord and hear His word
(Excerpt from “Come unto the Lord”, text and melody by Anni Baker)
 
Spraying with peach plumes
Quivers of violaceous arrows
Announcing
The pessimists are surely wrong
 
Nothing is really malignant
 
To cross
To cross to where the sun rises
The Long Bright