fluid dynamics (for Robyn)

Let's say that time is sort of real
and not just an artifact of motion.
That would make it sort of mystical.

Hold up!...what am I doing?!

I don't like poems with abstractions.
"Time," "artifact," "motion," "mystical" --
this poem is already creaking, cringing.
And what's with my breezy idiot tone?
It even smacks of the oratorical.
Damn -- "oratorical." Abstract.

I'll start this freaking thing over.


* * *


Look at that elfin, quixotic smile!
She smiles behind a scrim of briars.
I see tangles of surreal-red thorns,
and just beyond them, she is smiling.
This is how an angel must appear,
who looks askance at a crazy God.
That Old Soul is whining, confessing
all His sins to her warm, sighing smile.
She pours him a glass of red wine.

She travels light, a knapsack of magic.
She can pull out many shapes and colors
and the swirling tones of unheard music,
any time she needs such nourishment.
She travels light because she must,
and things in shadows watch over her.
She travels light, but her heart is gold.
It has deep weight, and it lasts forever.

Robyn has a way of changing time --
a fluid thing becomes more equivocal.
It spins like taffy into mermaid foam.
It spins dizzy from her imagination...
glittering threads form coils of spirit,
gyroscope ribbons of dreaming torque.

(Abstractions again, yes. I can't help it.
Robyn is beyond a daydreams's texture.)

The rest of us are creatures centripetal.
But she is a dancing thing centrifugal --
sympathetic waves make jelly objects
of Yves Tanguy pirouette and buzz,
dynamically weird in mystical Time.

I sometimes almost think the world
is held in place by her nomad magic.



Copyright 2011 -- Tim Buck