| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Robert E Porter / Artwork by Marge Simon |
| Make a donation to this writer |
| Hubble and the Dragon Gnawing at the Base of the Tree of Life and Knowledge |
The shroud of her left breast singed and blackened
by the pyre of her late husband
the skin raised and blistering with the laughter of children
in the streets of—not Mumbai
but the more cosmopolitan city of Bombay, India.
The typhoon of her right breast with its sad, brown eye
slams against the coast of Somalia
having drowned the pirates in her tears...
a brown eye that never blinks but calmly, ever so calmly
releases Hi-def images of the Milky Way
so that we might carve out that explosive hide of summer
and starlight. Soft, blue flame that continues to
consume her meat, and what it means to be
woman
wife
mother
in the world today and overhead, across the cosmos,
gazing down on her children while (somewhere
in Washington) a fat, white man
pounds his fist on a table and denies there could be
stars worth knowing in Bollywood,
any constellations at all in that armpit of the world
that did not reek of curry and elephant dung.
He did not know. God, all of the things
he did not know, and refused to
with the conviction that his people (and hers?)
so often mistook for wisdom and virtue. Peace
they would not know, either.
Their roots go deep
in time and space, but the tree appears only
to bear its fruit underground.
| Make a donation to this artist: |
