blackbird online journal spring 2002 vol.1 no. 1

POETRY

NORMAN DUBIE | The Spirit Tablets at Goa Lake

EPILOGUE

An artesian water-gig volunteers in the evening's mustard:
there's the dustfall of cow flies, stooped
and complicated by light —

small girls in yellow rags
leaving the thousand years of a dry hillside;
the earth moves

lifting the children into sky,
to the poor kitchens of the darkening mountain
where hungry birds in their least bright aspect reply

in generous laughter-like repetitions of flight . . .
it is again, the mother night.
 


return to top