By: Stephanie V Sears

Vashlovani

Of all places I am here at my place
at the heart of every possibility.
Space glides under the clear skin of sky,
invincible transparency
to well above the mesosphere,
vertigo of simplicity.

One glance accounts for countless paths
pounded by animal spirits
while the ears are given
a way to perspicacity
by maxims of silence.

Black strips of earth feed me
a taste like mouthfuls of bread.
They dip and rise to the Caucasian range
that surrendered blue and white
to a boyish leader.
The tossed soil still rocks
between snowy granite and thorny loess.

Accident, seashells, tracks, bone,
lay out floors of memory
for sentient paws to parade on.
Daily, ducks sew seams
between Azerbaijan’s lake and
fields young with corn.
In Bear’s Gorge the restlessness
condenses into small jasper pearls,
pinning fallen leaves at my feet.

###

White forest

See-through forests of Russia
relayed by fields of honey,
under-currents of gold.

Begotten by cherub clouds
bleached by the outstretched
sky of Siberia

that sometimes curls under
the girlish birch
like a wild cat.

Light and not cold,
likened the birchen forest
to clearings of ice

even through the tangled
depths of contemplation
and some trunks of subtle might

where secrets appear quickly
like fast-wilting flowers
in a glare of wonder.

I want to run beside these trees
which in their stillness
still race with me and

distill their striped barks
into liquors that dispel
the averse taste of being.

To my tongue comes a lisp of infinity
when their perceptive leaves
shudder and pivot,

an intelligence inside
the silver gossamer
of their supernal company.

Ritual forest
go gently with the gale
in my head.

###

Art full

High modernity
throws lateral glances
through glass walls

up in an airship apartment
where a picture splashed on brightly
is framed in licorice black
like a New Yorker.

A fig sky hangs outside as tapestry
bruised by seasonal change.

Altitude and art gorge on metaphysics
in an anaconda room stretched out,
dappled marsh green and abysmal blue
under the lowered gaze of wood lattice blinds.

Continents left their calling cards here
in a redolence of luxury.

Red insinuations escape the canvas
with candy stickiness.

A paint brush colors space and time
with indecisive March.

At every step guests forage through
a bric-a-brac of abstraction,

progressing through an abundance
of deviations and parallelisms.

What has been framed?
A fashion designer’s crimson
a mechanic’s oily wrench
a fallen empire of appliances
left on a futuristic wayside?

Through the window
in a last blast of brightness

sunset is soon snuffed out
by minor chords from a nocturnal piano.

###

View on a medieval garden

Flute, timbrel carom off the lark blue sky,
a girl-faced breeze walled in,
rustic down to the roots of
comfrey, hyssop, angelica, horehound
grown and brewed with air and dew,
and channeled to my slice of time.
The orchard praised by the purr of a lute.
The brain of spirit, the heart of fervor
hang lucent on tapering branches.
The dandelion breath of a horse
carves out ogives and cinqfoils
from rows heavy with crop,
stained like cathedral glass,
even as the sacred adage of the forest
is kept in the ciborium of an ancient apple tree.

###

Cross country

Where Finland and Russia embrace
Too frozen to untangle
We haunt each other
Winged and bewitched
By an orbit of silence.

Though snow chills like space
The interval between us
Condenses inevitably.

Like seamstresses at work
Fir and spruce brandish needles
Create a scent of darkness
A tear of shadow that opens
Winter’s opaque stare
Of intractable distances

Where chimes a fear
Of losing one another.

Our race melts the frost
Shelters us from the gone by
The subdued, the vanished.

Even as we are stripped down to solitude
By January’s raw temper
The things unsaid between us
Perform their own spell.

And the monastery’s baptismal glare
In this middle of nowhere
Means nothing to us.
.