This idea, this memory, this hope that glimmers in the shell of my mind
Like mother-of-pearl, like ground-glass powder, like a snail-track…
Is not a lamp in some office, in some church carefully tended
By clerical red or black.
It is a true rainbow-glow to leave a testimony of a faith contested,
Of a hope that burned more slowly than an iron-hard log on the fire.
Keep its face powder in your compact, when, with every light extinguished
The wild dance becomes infernal, and shadowy Lucifer lands
On some prow on the river, beating his bitumen wings half-cropped
from fatigue, to tell you…This Is The Hour.
It is not an heirloom, a lucky charm to withstand the forces of
A storm beating on the spider-web of memory, because a story
Can only survive as ashes. Persistence is only extinction. It will be a sign,
For sure; whoever finds it cannot fail to find you there.
Everyone knows their own. The pride was not escape. The humility
Was not meanness. The tenuous spark struck there no spurt
Of a spent match.
--Jo VonBargen 2014
Like mother-of-pearl, like ground-glass powder, like a snail-track…
Is not a lamp in some office, in some church carefully tended
By clerical red or black.
It is a true rainbow-glow to leave a testimony of a faith contested,
Of a hope that burned more slowly than an iron-hard log on the fire.
Keep its face powder in your compact, when, with every light extinguished
The wild dance becomes infernal, and shadowy Lucifer lands
On some prow on the river, beating his bitumen wings half-cropped
from fatigue, to tell you…This Is The Hour.
It is not an heirloom, a lucky charm to withstand the forces of
A storm beating on the spider-web of memory, because a story
Can only survive as ashes. Persistence is only extinction. It will be a sign,
For sure; whoever finds it cannot fail to find you there.
Everyone knows their own. The pride was not escape. The humility
Was not meanness. The tenuous spark struck there no spurt
Of a spent match.
--Jo VonBargen 2014