Bull Bright Taurus

 

Constellations bruised,

The whole eye of sky weary of prying and the séance of asking

When out of the old motor croaks the cherished blemish

As so much white smoke.

Pull the chord, ring the bell,

We have a pope.

 

We busy our minds like nuns in Devotion,

Sweep the cloisters and make the breakfast,

Hot and aromatic at 4:00 am.

 

Early is the Ordovician, the Hammurabi,

The fossil breached from cobble conglomerate.

Who came from on high has laid low.

And ten million light years is someone’s neighborhood, not us.

But our galaxy and the looks we gather as on a parade route

Say something of where we have been,

At night with warm drinks and a telescope.

Gathered up or in pursuit of what we will,

What grips the poet’s throat,

The singer on her high note,

The dancer, like the skier planting for pivot at speed.

 

To turn in the dark as the lone seeming asteroid

Obeying the shape of gravity,

Space and time seems a timid task but how and how different are we?

Trite commonplaces gathered together

Or home alone,

How different to reach out mind and pain,

Inwardness and insecurity.

 

Bound as for the glory

Found as for the rabbits,

As for the burrows,

The city by light of morning,

Children by gifts,

Animals by the prize of freedom.

To come and to go.

To begin with an eye to the end

All hesitancy gleaned and cleaned

For presentation of the question

That others may find us

As they find themselves

Open to consideration or

Already decided.

 

Election of the pontiff is a sacred obligation.

Man on earth.

Woman on the moon’s eye

Now thinking for herself,

No rib, no afterthought,

No second rate prize.

Sure as parents.

Sure as sun shine and

Grass flattening in Winter,

Thin hunger of stubble.

 

You stroke my cheek,

The luck of the genie in the bottle.

The smoke black as battlefield tar,

Clouds,

You stroke my cheek for the tears that come,

Four days of unshaved beard,

You stroke my face as a woman with an answer

Of her courage I might borrow,

Her providence I might lend out

As it was lent to me.

 

Old lean-to structure in the Wilderness

Where mountain rivers once flooded the plains,

Annual as a clock of seasons and constellations.

All are on the move

As a raft of refugees on a rubber dinghy,

The salt air, her long dress wet at the hem and

The tears of all the children answering as to hunger, as to possibility.

Yes we come and here we go,

Our ankles bitten as the brine flies are also on a mission.

The low stench and garbage barges keep track of everything thrown away

As the beach sands echo the mountains now eroded to be the paddle of surf

On the rounded pebbles of stone and of plastic.

Always now, we have arrived, selves in tow,

Goats leashed at the neck.

Knives and oil refineries at the ready.

 

Only our olive oil and white chrysanthemums today,

Only straw and mir for the manger.

We have a pope,

Laid in the stone sarcophagus of memory,

A savior as a clean stream,

The universal bovine of harmony masticating

What the Swiss guards tended in the Alps with

Their colorful costumes and Michelangelo.

 

We have a woman pope.

Her tan skin warm and covered in white.

We have the goat and the lam and the bull.

Unforeseen as gathering clouds on a Greek afternoon.

A mounting shower for the Spring flowers.

 

 

By Rolf Stavig

1-31-2021