poemimage

I meet an old friend for coffee and cake

we discuss the symmetry of

consequence, the coincidence of

symmetry.

After we stand on the corner

I visit two bookstores

near one another in The Annex,

mostly second-hand

books I will thumb through

a hundred times (knock on wood)

finding inspiration

sifting subconscious & mythological elements

a chapter here, chapter there

traipsing the curvilinear imagination.

Birds fly low magnetized by subterranean quartz

wings whoosh, swooshing

miraculously, above the roar of wind,

I hear their soft instruction.

A young person, in motion a river,

photographs the books

over my shoulder.

Humming a tune

I contemplate pages

on the subway train.

Or so it seems, the way she steadies her phone

visible out the corner of my eye –

my station approaches.

I said this image is four, maybe, or five-thousand years old

she said I saw the books.

She said something, maybe, what

she read or might be reading.

Maybe she mentioned Byzantium.

I understood barely anything almost nothing,

with her speaking through a mask,

the subterranean ambient noise,

additional my normal hearing trouble.

She repeats a word, I tilt my head

like a bird

darting

the door embellished with golden mosaic tiles,

sliding closes in my face.

A vast dimension

composed of light-years

descends upon me.

The sound of her mystery words

accentuates her aura

like a river in motion.

I repeat rhyming words

the consequence of symmetry

the symmetry of coincidence.

Thank you, she said.

I dart for the door again

climbing tiled stairs

beneath vast archways

tasting cake.

Birds swoop above & below a quartz-river

flowing from the sun.

The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology and Fiction by

Jesse M. Gellrich –

Sun, Moon and Standing Stones by John Edwin Wood –

Inside the Neolithic Mind by David Lewis-Williams & David Pearce –

A Search for Cave and Canyon Art: Voices From the Stone Age by Douglas Mazonowicz – (signed by the author)