Sole Evidence, A Chant

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
I present in poems the sole evidence
that life spires on - out and out forever on
thin-spun thread. My proof?
Today’s appearance of certain lines
of Blake - as he was old,
sat naked on his one stone step,
watched the sun, decided he’d take ownership
of the way it climbed without motion.
And he’d scan other wild lights that - in truth -
gysered up in his own staring and made more of him
than aristocratic tangles of hearsay and lace.
I submit that we were avalanche lilies together.
The flowers of us in gold-yellow. The red anthers.
We knew some preglacial kinship and we’d grow
near the snow line, begin our talk in the first days
of melting. And so I present William's eyes, a sea -
of no location. A shoreless looking.
And I offer the words of wilderness,
suggesting you nuzzle against them and go
into the far outdoors as we did -
such novel attorneys, William and me, in swimsuits
that covered most of our bodies in the old style.
Or - in later years - in nothing
but casual nakedness to cover the finest wires of us,
heated to incandescence. We paddle
in gusty surf with plain-speaking grins,
perform sea chanteys’ broken threads,
talk on about ships, skies, the heart -
and other irreducibles, comrads
to our undivided loneliness - yes, ladies and gentlemen,
we’re untracked forests, the blue ceilings
for oceans, the ways the sky
is father-mother to earth. And so,
we praise as innocent and undying
this day’s eternity: Appearance
of the sun landing in the frosty trees.

The eerie lichen of us in the wet forest dark.
 

© Tim Bellows