Our Vernal Equinox

          What joins all languages, and all men
          is the necessity to confront life…
                                           James Baldwin

In the space before the encounter zones of the planet
Lent themselves to planes and buildings interacting
Before General Slocum sunk with its sweet cargo
Or the Triangle Shirtwaist
became a fiery prison for young women
Of certain origins…not quite white or American
And Pop-tarts wrapped in weird Pashtun were airdropped
in advance of bombs that claimed no harm
Before Estevanico filed his teeth and
Shrunk pygmy-like into Ota Benga
And took to exploring exhibits in the Bronx
Before the vernal equinox, when we
Built the fire and shot deep into our own mind,
One final suffering,
Father Isaac Jogues felt his fingers
Chewed to stubs…filed like teeth
Meant for biting and fierce show.
What joins us?
The bleeding? Or the biting?
We move in circles
Like some hapkido arc
Or orb, turning ourselves dizzy.
Who can a princess run to nowadays to save?
What court will welcome?
And all the while Henry IV
Says cultivate and befriend.
The Jesuits arrived advance of the illegitimate,
the orphaned and other dregs, whored and painted.
They might have stayed behind to save them, their own-
but always new frontiers.
An expedition, washed like a flood
on Galveston shores, a premonition
of unrecognizable bodies and mouths spilled open…
of floods and dikes and bridges to nowhere.
Do you speak truth, Alvar,
dispossessed of Europe and positioned order?
Haunted in your naked parking orbit?
Waiting to land in safe arms
who after all and all and this, would not know you
or your shaman shells?

You disappeared into your Calypso
And came away naked.
Remembering the landmark of ground familiar…
And you are unrecognizable in your human state.
We killed and were ill for you, o king
And we knew no cure.
Are you moved? Do you believe?
Because we were certain in our disordered chaos.
Arrows might pierce or be traded for a promise-
it depends who you meet…out there
and how the wind blows
and where the gauntlet forms and
who finally holds the hatchet?
How differently we travel Estavanico-
You and I when we cross the Atlantic
And trade Morocco for Sonora
One way or the other.
And all our mothers’ fetishes are laid to waste
In his return….and ours.
The final orbit.
 
 

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