Pam's Poetry

Recovery

c. May 70

I am the bird in flight over the soft-wove fire of the early sun,
The phoenix risen in the light of fires from the coals of that which I have done.

I was an old woman puling dreams in the gutter
A-wash with tatters of a frozen goal,
A candle-light a-flutter,
An old man slanting to some supposed home
Through the muttering of twilight, adrift and all alone.
I was the witch which haunted all your dreams
And made blood curses to torment your body's ragged pain.
Ah, yes, I played that game.
I was the dragon and the child,
Passion-soaked and mild.
I was the maid asleep in the burnished nest,
The man suppressed, afraid, and the suppressor yet.
I spent long centuries poised upon your beauteous fields
Shedding clouds, the shrouds of my ancient enemy.
I consorted with the priest and sold my life and being to
the devil
For a moneyed fee.
I conceived that I was free and lived within a broken cage
And did not see the bars. I flung in high wide fancy to
the stars
And called it God.
Look, look, ceilings are such little things.
I was the angry prophet pierced with unforgiving light
And I was right and I was right,
And I was wrong and all the universe was right.
I squatted in the lowest dung of degradation
And flung foul spitty curses on you.
I inhabited a wolf's lair,
I of the fanged teeth, eating your flesh rare.
I lingered in the silence of the brooding depths of sea,
Then I poised in my flight and
Came close to catching me.

And I wore hands and eyes
But I could not feel and could not see.
I infested pools.
I lived by rules
And then without them.

I was death in the night slowly growing chill,
The long silence of the ocean floors,
The soundless sound of the willess will.
In apathy I occupied for years
A point that didn't warrant tears.
I could do no wrong.
I could do nothing.
I was sorrow brooding over the minds of millions
And I comforted myself.
Then I was afraid, cold and hot by turns,
Turning and always the danger behind me.
And I was the danger in the night,
Hidden in the long black veils of the assassin -
A knife behind a smile -
And for a while then I was anger, rift the rocks of the shore, 
Blood-red and swore and had the strength
of many men
And many men listened to me
And I spit at them and wore their teeth for my armor.

And I grew bored and went away
for a long time
a long time
a long time

Then I saw a grape upon a vine growing in the
summer haze
And reached out and plucked it.
Oh, it was warm and round to my touch
And seemed to say so much to my tongue.
And I was young again, willowed in the washing spree.
I has no hands nor eyes
Yet I could touch and I could see.
I made mountains and watched you run circles
around them.
I made running streams for you to wash within.
The wind that sighs around your hallowed head,
The meadow that you lie upon.
I watched you making sunbeams.
I became music
And you became light.
And I was the phoenix while you were the fire.
I was the day while you became night.
And I was the left when you were the right.
And I was and you were...And I and you
And we.

In the beginning and forever is the decision
and the decision is to be.
In the beginning and forever is the decision
and the decision is to be.
We am the bird in flight over the soft-wove fire of the
early sun,
The phoenix ever rising from the coals of what we have done.