Gods

Life lives in the corner of my house trying to move the weight
Of sorry things, past misdemeanors, and of late
Memories resurrected by my age
Collected in ancient sunlight, bothering the dust, rattling my cage.

Like the house ghost they fade in and out, but never leaving
As when the house is quiet; yet someone’s breathing
Listening to my thoughts, swelling the air with their nearness
Heaving the hot afternoon to cheerless at best.

And those parallel to us drift at ease beyond vision,
While we try the veil to escape our self-made prison
Reading portents in shadows and sounds
Seeing the red night sky, hunkered against the wild-hunt hounds.

Visible to the Antique worker with his garnets and swirls
Buried in the recesses of his round house with the secrets of the world
The inanimate became vital the lifeforce unfurled
As he danced down the millennia to the Anthropocene unobserved.

And we might see him in the canthus or the well-brim at twilight
Or at Samhain twixt the witching hour and dawn-flight
But look within to where we all reside
Where we make our gods and are beguiled.