April 2002
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

 

Delta Breaker                 Ink Wash                   1972

 
 Falling Night

 

The millennial warrantee runs down 

But the saving symbol can still be found.

Like a multiple twinge, a flutter of prayer,

Cosmic confirmation to head off despair.

 

Don’t look with your eye,

A new lover will confuse you.

Don’t listen with an ear,

The crackle in the music is a runaway fire.

 

Though pain and frustration

Is a wound in the giving

And the choral play of heartstrings

Only responds darkly,

 

You can rise with Aquarian flood tide,

Memory and wisdom evenly flowing

Past all designs, prophecies, water rose

Of bath and sacred star in the tracery. 

 

Inner peace is a hard working harmony

With dreams on foot, a ripening hung

Insecurely between wild understanding

And the nocturnal kills in the distance.

 

Is our temporal disguise fighting us?

Are we never too modern to become

Full-billowed or stripped bare, drifting

Inward, lightheaded in the falling night.

 

©Jimmy Warner, 2002