The Poet Mage

Prose Poem For The Sierra Dawn

In the summer, the air smelt of burnt sweet-wood, the air was bluish-gray with smoke. The magnificent and jagged line of forest and mountain chain contained silken envelopes of devastation similar to a beautiful woman’s words. Fallen and ashy tree trunks toppled haphazardly upon each other like so many toothpicks, logical arguments or rumors regarding the beloved. Grey and hazy-dusted clearings intermixed among the thriving, summer green.

The sun brought warmth and was magnificent, thusly. Made your companion’s skin flush. Gold and tawny limbs tousled themselves lithely among cool pools, whose rocks congressed intelligently at bottom, slick with moss. California cool conveyed itself as if in pure rays of light extending from the open hands of The Virgin copestoned among surviving and mighty oaks. The obedient and beautiful, downcast eyes of nymphae at concentric surrounds. So into this poured nectar. Thick, liquid gold to soak the forest’s floor, and mix with the dust.

From the lazy swirling motes, as if in slow guitar and drum counterpoise, formed briefly names, who just as slowly disentangled to dissipate. Oh the belayed fragments of a woman’s dreaming mouth drank from this sunlight, innocent and glorious and sexual with hands and haunches. Begone drudgery of darkness! Previous lightning staining stars with fire! Begone undue shift! The serrated teeth of daggers now buried in the land’s ash. The sun’s rise has robed the mountains in purest amber.

STANLEY GEMMELL
2009

Image of: AJ