to a blazing zenith, hovers at the center of the sky
dressed in sheer clouds, circled by a halo, ice and crystal light.
The nine circles of heaven spin, etched against a raven sky
my tender hand, shadow on this sterling disk, feels every echo
beat against the stone, bearing swelling life, full and aching.
Each open eye, each yielding nerve, reaches, straining
to see, to hear, the land lying beyond this thin veil
all around the breath of an unheard, whispering world.
About Double Vision
This poem juxtaposes two experiences separated by twenty years and six thousand miles. The first was visiting the Pantheon, one of the best preserved ancient Roman temples. The interior of this remarkable concrete building is an almost perfect sphere one hundred and forty-three-feet-high and wide. The curving walls lead up to an oculus, or twenty-seven-foot-wide circular opening, at the top of the dome. Oculus means “eye” in Latin, and this opening acts almost like an eye’s pupil, creating an opening to the sky and bringing dramatic shafts of light into the interior. The second experience was seeing a full moon ringed by a glowing ice halo. These halos form when cirrus clouds spread thin layers of ice crystals high up in the atmosphere where they reflect the moonlight. Enthralling visions like moon-bows and ice halos often hover above us, but they are less frequently seen in a world dazzled by millions of moving screens. The drawing is an interior view of the Pantheon, light streaming through its oculus.
Sign Language
Every word made clear by her darting
hands, wiry fingers fan out, palms turn up
pausing for a beat, then with a little flutter,
as if to say, “Really, what can you expect?”
Curling, rolling, tracing splines, pulling meaning
from lucid air. Her fingers arch, slowly curve back
like the liquid neck of a startled heron. Both hands
fly up, reaching higher. Suddenly silent, they drop
heavily to her thighs and quietly curl together,
two sleeping doves, still in the dusty, dim cote.
She leans forward listening, one hand leaps up
stabbing the air, her fingers taut, raptor stiff,
the sign language of bone and blood,
the cry of a hunting falcon’s wing.
About Sign Language
This poem was prompted by watching the eloquent hand gestures of a woman on a train in Australia. Her graceful curving motions reminded me of the movement of birds — actually not surprising because birds, bats, and humans have the same set of bones in our forearms. From humeri to phalanges, we all use the same working parts given us by common ancestors, but specialized to suit our own individual tasks. Recent research reveals other ways we are closely related to other life forms. In 2004, scientists discovered humans share approximately sixty percent of our genes with Red Jungle Fowl, the ancestral species of all domestic chickens, and even more astonishing, we share almost twenty-five percent of our genetic material with wine grapes. This research illustrates the deep fusion between humans, animals and plants — the result of our common inheritances from distant ancestors. This profound kinship we share with all life on our planet should inspire us to respect and foster all species.
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