(Click here to follow Pavel's ongoing epic poem “The Shoulder of the Sun.” You may visit Pavel's website at http://www.greyowlpress.com.)
by Pavel Chichikov
for Alys
He shakes the dead from His feet like dust
Not the God of death but life
His foot prints are the waves in stone
The many troughs of waves at sea
And yet with precious tenderness
He gives the song birds eggs of jade
Long shadows His, and ivory light
The ivory bloom of falling stars
He is the terror of close death
The blessing of familiar warmth
He is too large for me to see
And yet a grain around which forms
A droplet and a planet-fruit
Around a glowing pit of stone