41

I have witnessed my first Romantic Painting,
in person, on earth.
I saw it in the burnt red
garden where Apollo and Dionysus
shared Homemade Moonshine beneath the eyes
of their own pagans,
but I never saw that which could touch me
not only in metaphysics but in the physical
realm, until on my ascent to
the top of Mount Diablo from the plains,
I saw light crackling.
The veins of the sky bore
a sacrificial slice
and I was to near the mass
that was to near me.

Ichor flooded the marshes.
As wind battered my vessel,
a spirit released rage in a light show
too alike to the way humans plow
lines in the the earth.
Uneven clouds dried and cracked,
dried and in contrast,
suck water from the earth because they,
like the desert, know not
when we will once again turn to
the mystics.
I watched the invisible hands of Zeus
dance the strings that carried
the destruction of lifelines.

Who ever thought that the bringer of life
would snip the thread of fates?

I refused to look away.
I reached for a hand, your hand, and
I found in you something to anchor me
to the earth, but
I knew I had to
stare
into the bloodshot eyes which possessed
the power to strike me down
and burn me into the scorched earth.

I was blind to believe
awe was beauty.
To be faced with the unquestionable
question of the hand that holds the thread
and see the blade glint like a star,
like a gem on a slender finger, is to
bear witness to the sublime.