Eric Ashford | + Follow Poet |
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It Was the Always Will Be

It was the rat and the snake that ate each other.
It was the love in them.
It was the buttercup and the lupine that devoured the bees.
It was the insectivore legs that tilled the crumbling fields.
It was the crumbling fields that carried the legless off.
It was the fox that shook its head that sprayed red.
It was the upright shadow that wrote a crooked bible.
It was the moth that ate the angel – the angel with no mouth.
It was the angel with no mouth that spoke the loudest,
It was the love in him.

I am sub-tidal, littoral, an ebb and flow.
I am two seas in one ocean
I am one sea drowning.
Fronds and pods are my gods,
what is in them is in me and everywhere.
Shadows stir empty pots
words to fill them are my children.

I pinch my eyeballs
between thumb and forefinger,
seek out a dry shore for drifting thoughts,
try to remember only the salt and butter,
the spice that sets my table,
not the hungry ghosts
that swim inside my shell
their bellies hollow as dolls eyes.

I am both the margin and the verge.
Great waves beat together in the same heart.
Everything coveted floats away
on a leaking boat, then the boat must
surrender,
it has to come aboard its own journey.

Cicada are the shrimp of the trees.
Gulls are the tigers of the air.
Jump high enough and meet yourself
falling down,
the way out is the way in.

It was the horse that rode the wind and made it neigh.
It was the wind that chased its tail, the swirling tail.
It was the body that grew the mind.
It was the mind that escaped the body,
that ran from the mirage, the slippery shoes of desire.
It was the angel of you
that tamed the devil, made it eat the joy.
It was the angel with no mouth that signed,
speaking clearly in the way of waves and spray.
It was the rabbit that charged the windmill.
It was the windmill that killed the eagle.
It was the eagle that flew into the eye of Jesus.
It was the eye of Jesus that saved the madmen.
It was time,
time out of time that made the circle,
made the love within it.

Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021

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