by Pavel Chichikov
Not sick but simply drifting off
Drifting to the mirror world of death
As simply as the pole with smooth long strokes
Thrusts the narrow boat athwart the olive stream
Not sick, yet moving up against the stream
The maple not yet swelling out beside her window
Mid-March, a cold rain falling
Green and not yet warm enough to flower
Simply drifting off, she sleeps still more and more
Eighty years and six the rings of growth around her heart
Of willow wood – she enters without knowing scrapeless currents
Deep forces holding in the heavy, gentle depths
The photos on her dresser have no eyes
Pet hounds and speckled cats, lover husband dead
Bright eyed children more than middle aged
Fade off even as she never sees them
And the well-known puntsman poles and poles again
The long probe slips between his sacred fingers
He leans against the unresisting mud
And pushes off – the light pole rising to his grip
Her dreams? She dreams. Those are private dialogues
The colloquies with God that no one hears but she,
He is the puntsman and the river
And the shade that overhangs the narrow bow
What do they say, the passenger, the puntsman
The river and the shade – they murmur
Confidential words no other one will tell
Until the end is reached, the river rises, does not fall
She sleeps and sleeps, the leafy shoreline changes
For wizened spring at last is well-advanced
Well-grown are the buds of cherry, leaves of willow
Long as finger-tips against the olive stream
And here they make inscriptions as the punt advances
Something like the finger words that Jesus made,
But now it is the wind of God that makes them
Drafting with the pencils of the willow leaves
Here he writes against the water line
Life in shade and shadow, flowing script,
The fine inscription of your soul, Christine
And now they read together as it passes by
Visit Pavel's website at Grey Owl Press.
