| Blue by Kathy Fagan | ||
|
The sky is breathing birds this evening, breathing them in and out of the light. From light to darkness, the breath of them rises, the breath of them falls, the breasts of them glowing where the sun is. ______________________________ A sunset lasts where land is flattest. Where can it hide? ______________________________ But the needle in the gas flame and the skin it's burned for— beneath them is a hidden fire: pilot light, blue and bluer, like sky before the sun gets in, like blood in our veins before the needle. ______________________________ Make straight in the desert a highway for our God... and watch from it the sun on either side: needle in the gas flame, sacred heart of the pilot light. _______________________________ On this side, dusk, a pink horizon, the amethyst it gets to be; and leafless trees— plain as sparrow feathers here— are startled into light, like converts or the damned. _______________________________ I wanted to be Paolo and Francesca. Not one or the other but the passion between them: sparrow, sycamore, jumbo jetliner— what rises and sustains its rising, a lit thing in remotest blue, shining in a blue that never listens. _______________________________ Flying in God's face, is what they said. But if not there, O pilot light, where then will _______________________________ you fly? With the weightless dead at the end of the world? _______________________________ I've read that on All Hallow's Eve the line between life and death is thinnest. Like this horizon here: Make straight in the desert a needle and follow.... ________________________________ It's not the end of the world I'm thinking of but the other side: the sky vein-blue and deaf still, not a bird in it, not a breath. It will be morning there but not yet. I will be rising there but not yet. For now, the sunset lasts and lasts, and there are, besides me, people watching. KATHY FAGAN'S
most recent book is MOVING & ST RAGE. Her new work appears in current
issues of Field and Mid-American Review. Her poems have also
appeared in The Paris Review, The New Republic and elsewhere.
She teaches poetry at Ohio State where she also co-edits The Journal.
|
|
