"From Fog & More Fog", by Stephen Mead
For a moment eyes glow fox-golden, interested,
with a reserve for nerve should ground be stood.
Mostly it shifts, even above earth, the patches exposed -
a matted grass tawny expanding tallow-yellow where green meets blue.
You would not know plagues times flood from some parts in certain eons
with the usual civil unrest.
From such distance the bandits looting & begging lepers
again starve for naught.
The clouds, an organ-fugue, take up their plight, pumping black to purple
’til some Constantinople crests every silver drift
of demolished promises.
What else to hope for then, with the ash of all good books
the size of any human?
What Mount Fuji establishing its inverted fan
over mirrors afloat in the fulfilling sky?
Will your pilgrimage eliminate need, sacred pilgrim,
as you slip through these vapors coyote-still in the echoes of gray?
I pray for you to have the skill of a hawk, owl-headed,
the next time darkness lifts & mist clears for the world’s rising
eminence is still learning to guide our survival
should we choose not to kill it,
should we choose not to die.
(Thank you to John Hanson Mitchell’s “Living at the End of Time”)
Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/ ,Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, Art Collection from Stephen Mead.
Art by Stephen Mead