Sequels to an Uncollected Winter (1) – Compass Songs

by G. E. Murray

1. Morning of Crystal

This is the deathless body, and this

the land’s blood … and here the wine-laced sky

over Iowa resembles a heavenly parfait.

In one more day Des Moines

will be diapered by first snow. A young girl,

barely real, glazes the sidewalk

with a stupid look. Iowa in winter always

dumbfounds the love in us.

Before long, nothing opposes the weight and resolution

of this sky, this wilderness of earth

hardening. When heaviness strikes like a clock

glowing incandescently, the season

opens to itself, as if a familiar stunt

in a traveling show, a fabulation only

a touched young girl can devise for any new world.

Des Moines. November 1973

 Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.

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