Alan Botsford – Ⅰ
a mamaist tale
I
There was a time there was a time
Meaning to be understood was bowed to
And flowers opened their petals in gladness
And trees thrusting their roots down
Held the sky in their branches
Wonderment was blue and green and white and yellow
And red and purple were the surprise
There was a time there was a time
Grass curled up the back and spine
And the wind in waves coupled every
Joint and joined every
Couple in the dance of night.
Day dreamt of in the darkness
Came forward truer than Spring
And cities of houses poured
Out of the merge of dawn.
Light were the steps of the
Ants in the gardens
The earthworms slithered happily
In waiting for rain
There was no pity no pain
No peace and no portion of
Death dividing the stream
Into this shore and that shore
What flowed endlessly made
A story of its own
And the ending at the end
Was never known.
II
Who but you, world, ruled and reined
Us in
To find the ridden beast trotting
In the pastured field,
The road distantly viewed as
Mothers bend
To scoop up offspring rounded
In arms long and embracing,
Tender as the touch is sure?
III
Self there is no you to be true to
Unless shifting underneath erupts
Separate and adorned
In the air above where
We meet behind, beside, ahead
Of ourselves loved and loving while
Letting words gather like flowers in our arms.
For the procession we’re part of now
Leads the road, wending and winding,
To our doorstep to announce the journey
Into exile, the house departed from
Vanishing into or wandering through sentences
That will last the day long until
Night procreates with death
The story embodying us.
IV
Look look look upon the way it is
To see is to be
The feeling you feel at the way
Your looking tells what is:
You hear by the lovebird’s cries
No resemblance no standard no disguise
You touch the skin behind the eye
And rub the dust and illusions free
The rooftops that slope into the trees
Radiate with May, pulse with April
The ringing the singing the bringing
Skyward and earthward tasting
In your mouth like a poem
Is language tying you to its bed of roses
While sleep, a thorny mistress, shapes
Your throat into song
And the sheets aroma-ed
Of fresh ink are newly printed
As the heart’s web of this age gets published link by link
So look look look upon the way it is
How to see is to be
The feeling you feel
At the way your looking
Will tell, for you, what is.
I
There was a time there was a time
Meaning to be understood was bowed to
And flowers opened their petals in gladness
And trees thrusting their roots down
Held the sky in their branches
Wonderment was blue and green and white and yellow
And red and purple were the surprise
There was a time there was a time
Grass curled up the back and spine
And the wind in waves coupled every
Joint and joined every
Couple in the dance of night.
Day dreamt of in the darkness
Came forward truer than Spring
And cities of houses poured
Out of the merge of dawn.
Light were the steps of the
Ants in the gardens
The earthworms slithered happily
In waiting for rain
There was no pity no pain
No peace and no portion of
Death dividing the stream
Into this shore and that shore
What flowed endlessly made
A story of its own
And the ending at the end
Was never known.
II
Who but you, world, ruled and reined
Us in
To find the ridden beast trotting
In the pastured field,
The road distantly viewed as
Mothers bend
To scoop up offspring rounded
In arms long and embracing,
Tender as the touch is sure?
III
Self there is no you to be true to
Unless shifting underneath erupts
Separate and adorned
In the air above where
We meet behind, beside, ahead
Of ourselves loved and loving while
Letting words gather like flowers in our arms.
For the procession we’re part of now
Leads the road, wending and winding,
To our doorstep to announce the journey
Into exile, the house departed from
Vanishing into or wandering through sentences
That will last the day long until
Night procreates with death
The story embodying us.
IV
Look look look upon the way it is
To see is to be
The feeling you feel at the way
Your looking tells what is:
You hear by the lovebird’s cries
No resemblance no standard no disguise
You touch the skin behind the eye
And rub the dust and illusions free
The rooftops that slope into the trees
Radiate with May, pulse with April
The ringing the singing the bringing
Skyward and earthward tasting
In your mouth like a poem
Is language tying you to its bed of roses
While sleep, a thorny mistress, shapes
Your throat into song
And the sheets aroma-ed
Of fresh ink are newly printed
As the heart’s web of this age gets published link by link
So look look look upon the way it is
How to see is to be
The feeling you feel
At the way your looking
Will tell, for you, what is.
