Certain Rites of Summer

The Art of David Wiley

For A Few French Poets
Don't settle the score
      with your physical gremlins
      by exalting their demise in a song.
In those days
      when we plucked our sustenance
      from every passing hand
      that walked our way,
      swallowed everything in view
      and sometimes jammed it down
      if it wouldn't go quietly,
we inhaled secretions that had not yet
      been discovered,
hoping for an accidental alchemy
      no matter the odds;
we played Devouring Angel
      with our fingers and our glands
      working together
      in a powerful alliance,
holy or not we didn't care.

Our cathedrals and our sacred books
      were constructed and bound
      as we went along,
just pieces of the longforgotten planet

we came to lie down in.

Our eyes marched over
      a thousand battlefields

and rested among the rocks and trees
      beside the rivers and waterfalls
      until our flags and emblems
      our universe of hieroglyphs
      and dances in the shadows of campfires

became a world made up of stories
      long legends and the hoots of owls

a world so big we hadn't the time
      to see it or to rest.

We carried it in a pouch
      around the waist

and spoke of it
      as if it were a thing
      that we could hold and fondle
      before taking another bite.

Heavy as a lead weight with wings
      we covered our ground
      scattering seeds
      keeping our brushes in tune

listening for that dear bright
      impossible song in the sky,

watching for that rainbow
      that would melt our hearts
      like the violins
      and the reds of autumn.