Dragonfly: Edmund’s Snaketail

This species is currently known only from six counties . . .
It was thought extinct in the 1970s and 1980s . . . .
Giff Beaton

You wing to perch in the tree’s crown,

to still as jeweled yellow-green.

Your wings are panes overlooking

current’s clear and tireless pouring.

Through spring into the summer’s onset,

you haunt greens’ spectrum of woods

leveling to foothill’s chill seams

riffling over erosions of rocks.

River’s shallows ripple through rocks

for you to claim, to scud patrolling

your glinting stint of territory.

Mosquitoes’ plague and fate of flies,

your hunger scans through leaves.

Your globes of eyes veer out from eras

of genes’ lines past your reckoning,

launching the rush of flight to the kill.

An arrow’s shaft, you fly to hunt

the targets of your four wings’ course.

A phallic shaft in flight, you sheer

through air to wings arcing up

from rock’s island. You clinch her.

She arches her clubbed tail to you,

pair bending to one wheel of two of you.

You circle eggs shuddering from her,

not knowing a man’s name names you.

Among human numbers, you don’t know

the nearing of zero. Caught in sight,

your gleaming is beauty in sunlight

over waters where instincts know

streams, rocks and trees’ heights.

For now, April carries your rarity’s

facet of time you are. For now, you are

a jeweled valediction, a living brooch
you give to a branch, jewelling time.

Rising, Opening,
Encompassing

The universe is the only text
without a context.
Thomas Berry

Through different trees, wind becomes
different sounds.

The pines become the wind’s sound, here. I hear it. 

Again the creek leads me along its seam,
from my name.

Its artery opens out from trees, to a heart of water.

No identity will be time-honored. It
will be time.

I feel mine. It is blood-honored. It is change-honored.

It is solitude’s language. It is
oblivious sunlight

falling over leaves. Their ancient need greened to feel it.

Monumental time pairs into wings,
flexing frail bones. 

Wings open like meaning under meaningless sky. 

Again geese lift from the pond I once
knew well.

Their wings beat. Their harsh calls tear at the air

of my rising. We rise on our wingthrusts
belonging

in our migration. In summoning’s wingwind, syllables

whisper through the rush of more
slurring syllables.

The lines of being recite themselves. The primal poem

scores the lines of flyways through
impulses born

knowing their courses, as creeks follow courses.

The one wing eclipsed the sky, wing of
millions

of wings, shadow’s thunder of pigeons flown

gone into change-honor, accepted by
change-honor.  

The disembodying wind calls my embodied mind.

Time is the cadence falling. It falls
calmly as light

over leaves’ incarnation, carnage, reincarnation. 

The pond is left as ripples stilling,
evaporating

from my knowing. My heartbeats count the tides

of blood’s migrations, pulses echoing out into older
iambics of nights beating into days, in the wordless odes.

 

Bodhisattva

i. Emergence

Orange of oriole

will flash as aureole

of afterimage.

 

Pines will stand 

in flames’ orange aureole,

each a shrine of fire.

 

Words will mist in winter,

flocks chattering

to swirl to sky

to clear like breath in air.

 

Blown snow will lift

drifting cloudily

to pollen’s gold,

to twist to sand’s blind lash.

 

Tides will shift seeping

through marsh grass,

as sand’s hot blaze will drain

glittering through fingers.

 

Like faces, sunflowers

turn toward the far fire.

 

It is the fire floating,

centering the circle

of their world’s course.

 

Through murky depths

of uterine night,

all stars swirl out, colloidal,

to rupture and kindle.

 

As icicles melt

in sun’s brightening,

raised megaliths will melt

in time’s night.

 

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 2)

ii. Skry

 

A truck would rust

under a bright

ceiling of waves,

 

in the augury.

 

The many futures wait

to become the one future.

 

Like ebb tide’s surf,

tree lines would ebb.

 

Like leaves’ sheltered shade,

plumage’s browns 

would hide through leaves

of forests receding.

 

Wings’ sudden flurry

would be wings vanishing

in the rites of flight.

 

You would walk listening,

not knowing you’ve entered

 

the minutes’ last song 

of the last bird of its kind.

 

You would walk listening 

 

in passing beneath

brittle branches’ glaring aura

 

in the augury. In the augury,

 

the world would become

a different world.

 

Like incoming tide,

 

an arid latitude

would approach, 

oblivious of borders. 

 

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 3)

 

Dunes would drift burying

urns of cars, deeper

than sun’s punishment.

 

Wind’s dunes would shimmer,

unearthing the colors

of cars’ pitted paint.

iii. Orison

 

Molten gold poured

to cool, molded

 

into a reliquary’s image 

of a man approaching 

 

out from a gold vista

encrusted with gems

echoing sky’s stars.

 

In his gold centuries,

the bodhisattva remains

 

poised as if to step 

from his gold aura, 

to walk into time’s world

under wind-stirred leaves.

 

A bird was nameless

then was named

passenger pigeon.

 

Cameras aim at people 

turned nameless

in refugees’ lines,

 

some looking up at sky 

as if to scry 

into the glare of the sun.

 

The fecund world

becomes the human world.

 

 

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 4)

 

The human season 

becomes the unraveling 

of seasons.

 

The human world

becomes the reliquary

of the elder world

 

where beetle-riddled trees

become forests’ slopes 

of vanquished leaves.

 

Gold shoulders pass

from the gold reliquary

 

into the gold orison

 

that would gleam through

the dead branches.

 

 

iv. Dreamwalker

 

The many futures narrow

toward the one future.

 

You would falter, following

past each narrow tomorrow.

 

You would echo as you walk

under leaves, listening.

 

Dull plumage of veery

mirrors shade, blending.

 

Its song’s repetitions

pronounce living beauty.

 

The speech of echoes

would repeat the few words

for you to follow

like steppingstones.

 

 

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 5)

 

Your entered moments

would hover like mist

over a river’s

deafening fall and crash.

 

You would enter the nave

of the columns of the pines,

 

breathing pines’ breath

as they breathe your breath.

 

You would hear wind’s tide

flood through the tall pines

as aeolian orisons.

 

Branches would murmur 

soughing to clear

 

into the feeling

of an orison

like the span of horizon.

 

Your sight would dawn 

through benisons of branches.

 

Beneath viridescence,

gold shoulders would pass.

 

Gold shoulders would open

into crowning heights

 

of the viridescence.

 

Self would enter soul.

 

Soul would enter soulscape.

 

The many futures might open 

into the one 

future’s anthesis.

 

Each will be the bearer

of what will be,

 

 

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 6)

 

into echoes. Each will echo.

 

You will be the bearer

of what you will be,

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

 

v. Dream

Meaning, abandoned

to the middens, will lift

from your starless abyss

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

As you falter under

your azure zenith,

sky’s blue will know you

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

You will hear the moment

that is your life sung

by a bird taking wing

 

as you echo. You will echo.

Wind will bear wildfire’s

bright seeds, sparking

into bright wildflowers

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

You will feel your spine rise

to echo the towering

pine among pines

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

Your autumn will hold

how goldenrod glows

yellowing into hallowing

 

as you echo. You will echo.

(Daniel Corrie, pg. 7)

 

Ground’s earth will show you

gold sedges swaying

like a meaning of meaning

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

Time lavished a world

and offered its ground

to be your ground of being

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

Foretold in gold

and believed by gold,

bodhisattvas would walk

 

into echoes. All will echo.

 

When you hear the roar

of the course of the river,

you will follow its echoes

 

as you echo. You will echo.

 

Left behind you, its waters

will be a wake’s shimmer

that anyone might follow

 

called by echoes, who will echo.