Images | Anima

Nocturnes 14 & 15

Images

The passion and the nativity
as one—as windows overlaid
with images that populate
all points—that’s what I seem to see

The infant-man laid out on rafters
of brutish wood; on either side
a fugitive condemned to die
yet saved, for they’re his mother and father

With milk and vinegar brought to lips
which like the eyes, are baby blue—
he may yet speak, may howl below
a single star within an eclipse


     *


Anima

The only way for Joan of Arc
to live is in a one-woman play—
we see a star born like a pale
firework tumbling through the dark

Encompassed by the enemy—
by men so deep they are the wood
we can’t see for the trees—she could
revive the orphaned anima

And cloistered in the jailer’s midnight
(virgin waiting for nobody’s child)
she listens as the wood is piled
for flames that won’t outshine the spotlight