Conjunction
Sometimes, when the sun is twice itself
With light that quietly breaches certainty,
You feel the distaff side grow warm and glow.
Pores of colour erupt: something is to happen,
Un-alerted, beyond intimation, context free.
Perhaps a visit that starts a high-road journey.
Not into the desert, but that familiar thing: a sudden
Squall within, though now its eye moves hidden.
Perhaps inspecting secrecies; even a preached word,
Somewhat unreleased, unleavened, leaving language
Lame these many years, with neither fret nor fever.
Perhaps now a downward curve whose end will rise,
May take us up.
Words begin to feel a somehow finger touch their
Shoulders. Then congenial, down the spine, making
Conjunctions; laying energy behind eye and ear; then
Tongue-tip tasting darkness. Then a burst of light on
Grandpa's final face, as he lay wrapped in love, reveals.
This time memory finds the door and turns the key.
At another,
Surely that eternal Thought which made the universe,
Takes you into a world of dew, or a shooting star's
Brief statement; or the moon gathering golden evenings
Before appearing. For some, grammar in a sacred word
That meditates on them, then leaps, unlocking as she goes,
Disclosing small infinities. One who knew meaning
In light and darkness, and the shades between, said
Words alone are certain good…
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word….
So, at times
The uncertainty principle settles clear, and certain.
Stabilised into moments just long enough to do its work.
Thereafter, we return to what we know, the ordinary;
Breathe familiar fantasies. For the day has no alarms;
All is usual. Once more the world has four safe corners;
Morning its middle earth; night its usual count of rings….
At least till when the sun descends in double-self.
Edwin Thumboo
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