Mockingbird Hill

Hard times are upon us,

they are cracking down on shared passwords

and shoplifting,

Desolate days-

like the final third of an illuminated manuscript;

Fine penmanship doesn't get you as far as it once did.

A nuclear error, an able archer away from

what- from looking behind us at all, much less

ahead,

much less reaching out a trembling hand to a sleeping swan,

closing thin fingers around the slender neck,

squeezing ever so slightly, even if it wakes even if it honks and pecks and thrashes about and tries to leap into the air or run headlong into scummy water,

pluck a white feather, just one, and let the bird go free.

Ignore the evil eye, it's like that for everyone.

(They make their own candles, up there on the hill above the sea, behind the stone walls where the rain seeps through and it is never warm but for the giant hall where

their bodies and candles collect three times a day to sing and pray)

But they made decisions on the Costa Brava, after all. We can all look the other way

if we need to, if the sea is turquoise enough, hypnotic, if the dollar goes further.

They say - it is written in the books, the annals - they say,

on a morning of peat fires and lice, before dawn even, before anyone but the most dedicated farmhand is awake,

the men (all were men) stood in the giant hall surrounded by their own candles

and their own hush.

The sun clawed up above Norway, spilling newborn light on the curving prows of the

longboats, the yellow heads of the raiders who when they slept dreamt of the green-topped slate cliffs where this stone hall stands, open-roofed to the starmilk night.

The quiet antiphon, a stifled yawn, head tipped back, then the jaw opens in marvel:

across the spillwhite river of the sky a ship is sailing,

the keel and the hull sparkling like silver, clean of barnacle and gouge,

the sails billowing and gleaming, pennons streaming from mast peaks,

the figurehead a creature unknown to any eye or mind on this world.

Dangling, a long rope of adamant and at the end the anchor

scraping along - now they can hear something beyond the wall, those who have not yet looked up, the digteeth of the anchor chewing a trench in the turf upon which the

hall sits like an ugly brooch in baize.

The wall shatters, the anchor and the rope snag

on the rail of the altar. All mouths now O, no praisesong, no sound but awe

and its attendant silence.

The ship overhead stalls, snags, stops and hold above them, as though

some airborne Pentecost flamed in the night.

As they looked as one, a figure peers over the rails of the ship, looks down, climbs over.

It slides down the rope, slow slow like honey dripping from the shallow of a prelate's spoon. Curled around the rope, the body extends, leaning down to grasp the stuck anchor.

They stare at the figure, not man exactly but not so unlike a man as to be uncanny.

He - they decide later it is a he - struggles at the heavy anchor, tugging and winching,

trying to loose it and as they watch, a discomfort, a pain blooms upon his face, and his mouth opens to gasp, to speak unknown words that are still somehow perfectly understood

and the abbot, grey and bald as any other, mottled and putrid compared to this other

who gleams with inner galaxies and glaciers,

exclaims aloud, in contravention of their rites and laws,

"He cannot in this lower air subsist!"

and all together, they hove like sailors themselves, hand upon hand, gripping the caught anchor until they had freed it and with a lurch up and up it sprung, the visitor

rising, hand over hand, up and up the rope again, back into awe, away from the mystery he had fallen down into,

and away they were gone

and the quiet settled over the hall again,

wall broken, floor trenched, altar warped.

The nub of a swan quill scratching on parchment paper

tells fantastical things; we sit and eat fresh fruits and vegetables, try to live

the way we know we should, even if it is hard and expensive and

miserable. Even if the clouds shield this modern world from miracles,

dreams in our heads

of pineapples all the year round and wake finally alive

for five minutes.

Thai girls stand at the side of the offramp, one of them is pregnant,

her own anchor in her own altar

her own sailor leapt skyward to doze in a beach chair in Cadaques

and take communion on Sunday morning,

head tipping back to finish the wine, eyes holding the entire heaven

in their gaze, clean and clear and nothing

to spur the heart

could ever be seen.