Ric Carfagna

from          Symphony No. 9

          (nocturnes & thresholds)

6

And to understand this vastness

this ghosted cosmic sentience

scattered among the wounded

autumn debris

when the sky is

a throbbing abscess

leaking a caustic life-force

which stains the pavement black

and leaves the landscape

a sallow portrait

of hollow faceless masses

       and it is here you enter

       the blank page

       unaware of the other

       in the mirror

       or in the eye observing

       movement of hollowed bodies

       on hypothetical ancient continents

       buried beneath the ocean’s depth

       and the blood

       flowing to brittle limbs

       and formless life

       devolving

       from a prescient

       elemental self

“now the chthonic

   sirens in the wood

   hovering

   as in a dream”

and the shifting epicenter

of the brooding apocalyptic seethe

and the gray strands of dissolving cirrus

falling through a crepuscular sky

24

This moment dies

without a spirit

infused

or a face

turning

from the identity

the mirror reflects

an insignificant detail

the arcing curves

in the crow’s wing

or a veil covering

the firmament at dawn

“and yes it is useless”

to try

to interpret

the consciousness

resident in the hydrogen atom

or the thought process

of the gnat

removed

to a quantifiable abstraction

as if it can be

an empirical measure

intimately understood

one

hidden behind

the wave length

of interior light

and one

in a world

of deities

and angels

imitation of breath

and passages

across a transparent threshold

where stones

are wordless sentinels

keeping watch

as a night falls

from an ocean of eyelids

and a sentience departs

the autumn leaf

dying on the forest floor

62

Not again

to dream of the sea

as a desert

viewed through a doorway

or the stilled-wind blade of grass

as echoing

the inertia

of an existential annihilation

“it is more”

a diverse phenomena

a splintering shaft of light

penetrating

the stain glass pane

the synergistic commingling

of sub-atomic elemental symmetries

“it is more”

a possession of

a deeper evolution

intrinsically embraced

a substratal threshold

oblique in its

dimensional perspective

“it is”

a glass tear

of empathic lamentation

or a sparrow

on a limb

evaporating

within the eye’s

averted gaze

“it is”

a summational zero

looming in the trough

of primordial sentience

a bleak glimmer

of dying night

saturating the burning tundra’s

frozen plain

“and it is”

a passion torn

from fleshless waste

and apocalyptic negation

***

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