Ghost Orchid
Unfinished Psalm
I like how the days crescendo into night,
and the dark itself a rosary of hours,
and the full moon the soul’s white pendant.
Each dawn’s an anthem for someone’s deliverance –
not mine – for I am still anchored to longing
like a nautilus to its spiraling house,
and only the tides of desire unloosen my hold.
December. The year dies anew, and yet
high clouds bear witness to change as they drift
into each other, reforming themselves sweetly
into origami cranes, rabbits, and doves.
Night’s sum of shadows exacts my dues, but
whom to pay? The darkness offers only this
temporary, shadow solace – a quiet place –
and it says, Who are you, oh voiceless one?
"Midway in her poetry's journey, Maurya Simon, one of our country's finest writers, now offers us her God book, brilliantly crafted but also Blakean in its powers of illumination and insight. Ghost Orchid is a 'grace-haunted' translation of the 'hieroglyphic heart,' a visonary marriage of heaven and hell consummated somewhere near the crossroads of the spiritual and erotic. We encounter not only God, 'who loves us all to death,' but also the 'albino angel, a helium virgin,/ who lifted off into space like a chrome rocket,' and Beelzbub, 'poet laureate of latrines' and 'kingpin of sinners.' A true master of metaphor, Simon here performs poetry's ultimate task: the alchemy of body and soul." – B.H. Fairchild |