Steel Jasmine¶

This fool walks the edge of worlds,
wandering through endless boundaries
beneath starry nights which wrap
him in a timeless cloak, a man lost
in the utter beauty of it all.

The crushing, terrifying beauty
that sometimes crawls up
soft and inviting,
sometimes grabs and chokes
in its steel grasp:
unexpected, unable to breathe,
bound and chained and chanting.

Everywhere the scent of an old flower,
crushed into the folds of me
a long time ago, next to a river
as the village drums played and a wind
wound its way into my head,
whispering stories of hungry roads,
strung across with Anansi’s webs,
forged somehow in the flowing night
by floating through space, suspended
on a single thread of silk,
singing too the singular truth
of star jasmine, fragrance as notes
that can be felt and all the world
one thing, rightly seen.