WINTER ' FOURTEEN
Yes, I will burn like a bush but I will not be blackened.
This is the law. Unavoidable. Sweet as a nut or a berry. Another abundance in another season – so what
are the festivals I may attend or is it to be a profane canticle which must cross my lips into the world at large.
Sweet nudity for which there is no precedence nor is one sought in the guise of justification. This is the
world. It is not other.
This is the world and I am a singer.
Echoes also of course – my feet on these stones and my words on the air – so you there, listen. The first
and second abundance hath come upon us yet still at gilded animals do they bow in wilful submission.
Fallen Adam among them for the second negation. Yet I..yet I..not with the Calvinist doctrine of sin of
the fathers unto the sons for I have disowned and ask again – father who is my father?
Silence.
Silence.
All is quiet on the air where apart from bells and birds there are neither echoes nor twitterings a mind
might take refuge in. then let the nudity of god fall upon me as a seamless garment of my station and condition.
Condition: it is a mild spring day.
Condition: I am homeless and childless.
Condition: I owe no allegiance to any with, perhaps, the exception of these sparrows in the air.
Such nudity is my condition and I revel in my condition. So, who is he, that master workman; that I
might be him? Gloss in the margin of a text where the text folds in on itself with a fine weaving – yes, let that
be my guide if a guide there is to be. or failing that a blank page awaiting the forms of my signature.
(O Fortuna it will be thus!) nor lesser brightness be unto me a guidance.
They are not my kind yet I am among them yet they do not see the subversion. I the enemy within. I
escaping the massacre. I the flute player atop the desolate gates of an over-thrown city.
Desolation.
The earth is desolate but I will populate it again. Ark of language. Potent verb, bright (and brightening)
adjective. And the noun will assume its rightful place and occupation. I giver, I weaver, I woven thus nor
otherwise shall be. living in the verb To Be (speak against that my accusers for speak against it you will).
Yet this is my commandment unto you.
As it was aforetime so shall it be hereafter.
But this is not world’s end. Merely one road leading int o another. Junctions and joining – yes, but also
the separations of the ways. Which path shall I choose when I have already chosen.
does not matter yet destinations do not lie.
Mine the singular way. Mine to be the un-trodden path which I’ll delineate. Make of my world the world
as it is. World that will be with or without its amen. No more fitting closure. My footprints for others. Others
will, others won’t. (what are we that we should not be other?) yes, question wind and water. Question even
the un-answering air.
I question and I answer to my own satisfaction.
“Will you…”,
“I suppose…”
Away! Fiends of air be-gone! Nor any other lushness lure me to lesser affirmations.
The Linnet's Wings