Astride the Earth

Even in casual conversation,
her hands are drawn upward
unconscious

Into the shapes of the
penitent, into the gestures
of prayer

And her eyes, though she's
young enough, have that
serenity

That absence of tenseness
that so often marks those
on the downslope

And even her smile is somehow
slow, ineffably soft in that
dimness of her room

Everyone she talks to feels
just for that moment, that
he's special, chosen

As if, as she regards you
you become alone and unique
on the earth

Plucked up from the rank and
file, the gray phalanx of
trudging similarity

Given, just for a moment, a
ray of something pure and solid
out of the great ephemera

And she, like goddesses are,
is unaware of it all, in her
bliss the illusion

The mirage of normality, such
that, from afar, even those
looking wouldn't see

And her days come and go, just
as ours do, and she has her
small successes

And even her setbacks are minor
miracles, for they allow all
the smaller creatures,

We who scuttle about in the
dust at her feet, a moment
in her presence

A moment when we can act as
savior to one who stands, colossal
astride the earth

Patrick M. Tracy
11/6/09

In the Vestibule, Where They Do Obiesance to Tiny Gods

Bent things
crimped down
eyes turned
ever toward
their handheld
digital gods

the small gods
best worshiped
in lieu of experience
in the easy turning
away from the real,
the actual, the present
and accounted for

whole flocks of
ghosts, caught
somewhere between
the tangible and
the ethereal,
unaware of each
other as the
world swoops by,
tethered to
existence only
by their thumbs

and in me, the strange
impulse, the thought that,
with a single, violent
motion, I could sweep
them all from the
stage of life,
that they would go down
like blind fish crushed in
tunnel collapse,
unknowing, having perhaps
never known, and only
really half alive

but that is a rogue thought
a moment of my own madness,
this desire to awaken these
sleepers, to enlighten in
blood these many drones that
so blissfully serve the hive,
and perhaps I am one, and have
been, and this febrile wakefulness
serves only to torment me with
that failing that hits so close to
the heart.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/27/09

True, but for the Details

Thin, tall, still awkward
with those long legs and
feet that have grown
like slender birds
always diving groundward,

the virgin turns away
and holds a match
to the pipe mouth,
fragrant smoke
surrounding her,

obscuring her thin
shoulders, her round
spectacles, her
face, pale from long
hours presiding over
the business of books
in the darkened library,

and she is unaware of
herself, of her body as it
moves like an unfettered
young horse, not quite graceful
but full of the new energy that
will slowly fall away as Autumn
comes onward,

but then she speaks, and
everything is changed, for
her voice chirps and whistles
and grinds, like the muttering
of a raven upon the split-rail fence
and of these narrow things, these
arcane pursuits within the pages
and curled paper--

of these things she is sure, and
she will hold forth about these obscure
articles of faith, which are built strong
and populated well in her sheltered
valley, and we older ones, shirt-tails
dirty from our long journeys, from
the fording of many rivers, from the
frequent times when we have crawled
upwards from the dust--

we wonder, wonder what will become
of her, this young, book-fed girl, so
sure, so stern in her own small way,
as the weight of winter falls upon her
and if she'll be lonely in the sheltered
valley forever, too narrow to let anyone in,
or will she walk past the walls of
sheltering stone, exchanging surety for
doubt, exchanging knowledge for wonder,
turning in that sweet, endearing clumsiness
for the slow, trudging step under the unrelenting
sky filled with the soot of bitter remembrance.

Patrick M. Tracy
10/16/09