Daytime Stars Moon

Daytime Stars Moon

Full Moon  July 13, 2022

 

(An honest address to the goddess

of awakening begins with confession—

This world can feel too much.

Gratitude you beautiful awakening

dark appearance dream cataract.)

 

Black is black at night in dark awakening

the dark is honest & sublime, the black awakened compassion

stars the stars the startled spots of light in night at dark in love

these hard days of hard speech & short breath, this love untired

this mask of light & speech of love & startled spark of wish—

furled in deepest depths, the dark of love grows light this wish!

this honest wish releases self-tight tension, these brown eyes tire

of my secretive view, my furtive fear, my grappled hope

for poetry is anything, a moment of night in speech, & prayer or dedication

sends this starry speckled wish home-flying in every direction—

to old homes & friends, to the dead long gone ripples, to corner bars

to inside this heap of cellular conditions, cooperation of mitochondria

our life a single infinitely long shot in a handful of billion years, O planet

our heartbroken home of living archetype, & to our seedling love—

this living & dying is dark, the good good dark, the pounding sea black

even to the depths where salt drops out & light gives spectral shape

to an oracle available to each, every single thing knows it, space potential—

the shape that does nothing but hold open the way for more nothing-separate

to ferment, to imagine that estranged life could live within our own

that we would step aside to gestate together, to make literal the symbolic orb

the circle that leaps awake to the line, the eye we see in another face

you are that one dearest stranger: come when ready! I ready myself—

washing over & again in the tide of dark, in the breath of light

on this, on this wish I promise my life to you, you who comes again—

without you & your well-being—my life, my life, my life

is not my own, O ephemeral you inconceivably embodied here,

come manifest into whatever awakening wherever compassion is needed

may I serve this indefatigable torrent of emptiness sky arising

forever & for real, all over & again— when I fumble in confusion again—

again the pinpricks of awakening! again O again the stars in daytime appear!

 

 

Poem by Qayyum Johnson

Painting by Suiko McCall. It Doesn’t Appear at Dawn, 2018. Ink on paper, 12×12″.