FINDING A CIRCLE IN EXILE

We who descend now from

high-mountains…  Snaking through

dark-grasses that would graze

our minds, find no fault with

liquid-symbol, but those who speak oblivious

to what they mean, as prisms   

once had juxtaposed the motions

that we come to see.  Bottled

up in the histories of she who deigns

to speak, but in act adheres to

some ancient code.  Our minds

reside in mountain-pools, or exist

elsewhere, slipping as fish into

channels of thought, a glyph

etched upon the layers of some

god’s brain…  & here, is patience in her
gaze, that leans off into cisterns
spread against the gossamer       

moon.  I venture past the eastern

gate, where I return (at last)   

a stranger.  Perhaps we’d never

truly known each other, or the people   

had failed to recognize who I

had become.  Her thought teeters

there in a realm before-words

until she speaks, & the dusk  

spirals from her in the silences

to which they had both returned…

She finds elusive the shrine   

littered with a few-plums    

& her mask falls to the earth

a stone…