To Board the Reed-boat of the Sun

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Sun hangs, white-gold in indigo,
to photochromic view,
delineating tangled twigs:-
gold/brown chiaroscuro.

Paint me out too in light and dark,
so intricately dressed,
transcendent pattern teased out
from a tangled mess.

These sleeping Illuminati,
breathing through twig stomata,
are blessed in their unconsciousness,
their vegetative coma;

while we, awake, ache at delight
and groan at our shadowed part;
two theater masks, a grin, a lour,
fed through the chambered heart.

But the afternoon world turns on,
and a blinding sun consumes
divisions of the surfaces,
Set* spears at our old wounds -

then close eyes on that quietus,
within a carmine screen;
breathe now as slowly as the trees;
dissolve in dream.

................

*Set rides in Ra's sun boat with a long spear for the dusk fights with Apep the snake.

It happens to be Ash Wednesday, but despite my upbringing, I dress out the  time in the ancient Egyptian mythopoetic not the Christian one.


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