Before I burn
any of this cedar,
I will have to marvel
a while at its wine-red
marrow, like a bright ore

in the bones of a mountain, buried;
a color yet not a color
in the absolute introverse
where it formed, locked from any light.

Here it turns up by accident —
and axe, a branch having snapped
from snow — this unsettling mandala
with its lustre of satin and porphyry —
never meant to be seen at all. . . .
Yet meant for something. — Something

unsuperficial, like grace
perhaps, or however we see in a dark
room in a dark skull the purples and ivories
of our improbable dreams.











By permission of the author.