Ric Carfagna

from Symphony No. 4 (the spatial fate of muted zeros)

1

It is a field of crows 

it is dawn 

as emptiness 

is receding

as the facile touch 

is entering 

the restless marrow’s 

ebbing sea

to contemplate 

the asphalt precipice 

bending through 

the doorway of mortal hours 

as sun behind clouds 

avoids observation 

as the grey ecliptic’s 

taper speaks of cyclicality 

as the light enters 

the eyes of lesser incarnations

5

And it is now 

a room of five walls 

a view from a window 

having been determined 

a radius of sun 

having fallen though 

the emerald lace alcove 

it is here 

an arachnid crawls 

like viscous ash on silken eyelids 

it is here 

a weathered face dissolves 

as hollow wind through granite pines

it is here 

synchronicities are liquid shadows 

weighting the day’s rigid spire of light 

it is here 

the keepers of the garden 

inter the inarticulate orchid breath

it is here 

the incense of firefly wings 

bleed into the silent stone glandular forest 

it is here 

a wolf of amber cinders 

howls in the cavernous night’s amniotic sleep

16

The complexity of the ocean 

of shadows seen 

in winter doorways 

of the diminishing halo

of slate rooftop glare 

and to pass into this 

unframed foreground 

converging spires 

hollow as cloister heat 

down tiled corridors 

yet here the thought is

of consciousness 

consciousness inhabiting 

the atom’s shrouded void 

consciousness of fluid breath 

flowing through engorged seas 

consciousness of streaming light 

entangled in the massless neutrino’s girth

23

The clenched fist 

opening to the moon’s ascent 

opening the runic claw of celestial isolation 

here the city lies 

sleeping under the sulfuric cumulus rains 

here there is no thought to starlight 

lost in the talus pyres’ endemic permeation 

here there is no thought to see 

the tethered cremains of bodily deracination 

here there is no door called night

blown closed by a flailing wind’s transcendent ire 

here there is no rusted hinge ethereal portal 

to bring forth a black lattice primordial dawn 

here there no thought to enter

the castellated gardens of lace and smoke 

here there no penitential silk tongues 

chanting the crystalline psalms of light 

here there is no hawthorn blooming 

covering the muddy graves of humanity’s lament

46

Place names in fog 

or what is elsewhere 

the shore of a muted sea 

as the image collapses 

the mind’s eye 

the waning moon’s phase 

or the subterfuge of winter vertigo 

here a window’s frozen pane

outside the perimeter of light 

the myopic eye of heresy 

a north wall’s shadow cast 

inside a room

the ghosted minotaur breath 

the illegible voices’ unspoken veracity 

and a clotted labyrinth’s fortnight dream 

now the dull thud 

of reality’s cudgel 

the cold iron hands 

fusing the rusted flailing limbs 

the spatial void between 

a corridor of recessed doors 

or light unseen    entering 

the winding stairway’s chamber well

47

Above a tree line 

a plume of smoke

leading to night 

an intimate wound 

opening on broken flesh 

the continuity of death is near 

in a garden 

the isolation of a marble portico 

crimson rain 

dripping from a starling’s wing 

a gutted house of stained glass 

a raven on a monastery spire 

a dense sun filtering through 

an ailing palsied overcast 

the continuity of death is near 

the bones have been interred 

the mountains drowned in the sea 

the candle’s holistic pyre 

the bleating night wind’s scour 

the atomized crow of winter’s scar

49

Thought divines 

the electron’s path 

as if 

upon an azure sphere 

a wind diminishes 

through trees 

as if 

a flight of crows 

penetrates 

the eyes 

eclipsed by sleep 

as if 

the clinging viral cell 

leaves 

a progeny within 

the nascent flesh 

as if 

the fluidity of breath 

is dust 

passing through

the static fabric of myth

53

As a new world is 

resurrecting 

the ashes of one 

as dust is flesh 

returning to the womb 

as the nebula is

the distillate form 

of perspectives abandoned 

as the blind sparrow 

sings in the stone wall’s hollow 

as the blood of night is 

the sleep of eternity 

flowing in the veins

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