Isis.

[Guest guest]

The Queen of the Nile has flooded my banks.

I am the infant Moses nurtured in the reed bed,

and the intimate lap and lullaby sway

of the waters of Isis.

I am a green palm tree in Her oasis.

Her Spirit is my shade.

The Sun God is laughing

for His Queen has lured

an other water baby into the arms of love.

 

She has been sewing a reed raft

with invisible incantations

while I rocked afloat in Her womb.

She has come with flowers in Her hair

and teased me into manhood

with the tickle touch of divine fingertips.

I am rewriting a bible

a living sea scroll of remembrance.

 

I am a lion in Her bosom,

my mane matted with desires sweet dew.

I have no name, but am a pet in Her passion.

Fed with milky morsels of joy

that drip from Her hands as love letters.

I rip them open one by one

and mark my territory upon them.

She smiles at this

and pats me down with a lovers kiss.

 

Isis takes me to Her river,

washing the sweat of a thousand nights of longing,

from hank and flank.

I can only wade here and tremble.

One of Rumi’s reed flutes salvaged

upon a shore of ruin.

I am a ruin waiting to fall.

A door unhinged and a lock burst asunder.

The ibis and the crocodiles are my lovers

they pull me under Her standing,

and baptize Jesus in my soul.

 

Mary Magdalene kisses my feet,

and I hold her nakedness to me and shudder,

growling love into her ripe belly.

I am every sweethearts upheaval.

An invisible wave pushed into appearance

by a pulse from the fingertip of Love.

Isis has found every rendered chunk of flesh

and breathed Her life into my arteries

for her pleasure.

She has sent this soul berserk in the world

as Her divine rogue elephant

to trample down anyone

you has cast love from them.

 

The willow weeps no longer,

but sweeps this river

with the tresses of her graceful hair.

This man god-being, her current

and her care, sent fathering into exile

and returning, a prodigal heart of Her greening.

If the wind howls I become a wolf.

If the sun burns

I become an arctic lake

melting into a gulf stream.

If the dawn does not bring the scent of fresh roses,

I open a rose garden in the hearts of children.

I am the bear and the fox

my den is hidden from every hunter but love.

 

Plucked from the reed-bed

my eyes open on this world once more,

and I see all this passion seeking a channel

to run to.

And so I open my mouth as a delta and drink

all this new wine down to be your drunk.

This ‘I’ I speak of. This estuary of acceptance.

It has no form to hold to.

It floods the basins and the meadow-lands,

the deserts and the valleys.

It has no name on any map.

It is unexplored but explores itself

by letting it waters be any level.

It is just a flowing.

 

I am the ‘Valley of the Kings’

washed into new pastures, and raised

up as green corn again.

Every trembling ear has a thousand seeds

that disperse upon the breath of the Friend

to fertilize the earth with spring shoots.

Isis harvests this soul and plants a new awakening

in every lovers seedbed.

These words have no one to speak them.

They arise like fireflies in a warm wind.

Isis labors and they appear from nothing

and return to Her womb as Her children.

Like this, poems blossom in the eye of eternity

flash across a mind-sky and disappear, to be you.

 

love

 

eric

 

 

 

Copyright 2002. Eric Ashford.