The fan
slowly turns on its axis
to Mahler’s Loneliness
in Autumn
(in my earphones),
undulating,
keeping time
with the music’s
planetary rhythm.
The graceful blades
cool a man
who lies comatose
and alone,
a degree
from his mortal end.
A hawk alights
on the windowsill,
a portent
from myth,
the shapeshifting
raven
waiting for the hero
who has fought too well,
his wounds
outnumbering
his nightmares.
Ancestral
wraiths
pass through him
in procession.
In their thousands,
to the shifting sands
of violins,
as the contralto
soars,
they come from
as far
as his third eye sees,
along
a spiral path,
full of light
and joy.
The hawk
flies away.
The sick man wakes.
The fan bows to him
like a sainted nun.
Sunlight fills the room
with love.
The contralto
tears
my heart into
quivering strips
of understanding.
Hope is born
of hope that had died,
purified
of childhood fears,
holding new breath
in a blasted landscape.
Wild mountain flowers
drip
their
dew
onto
the
sterile
floor,
the teeming
drop
beginning
a stream
that will form
the first river
in all creation
flowing into
the first ocean.
Rough tea leaves
from a painted tin
make the first drink
that is not poison.
Bread
made
with full grain
by a woman’s hands
quells hunger
at last,
and forever more.
The hawk
is back,
black
in the setting sun.
The fan
is gone.
The man it cooled
is gone,
taken away
on a gurney.