Becoming, not being

Richard Magahiz

Becoming, not being

gracetime grains of dog-bodies
scull  in  precious cream
                                                                     coracles
cramming the foursquare case
clock that throbs triple
                                                                     tempo
tame senses are unweaned, too
weak to nose out their scented
                                                                     strokes
such beings that look sweetly
in on our cradle, a fairy hovering
                                                                     honeybear
haloed in hound’s tongue
backed up by a sidewheel titanic
                                                                     turbine
to watch this divinity lick us tacky
in an act of cosmological
                                                                     kenosis
coolly she turns more colossal
by parts in assessed fairy
                                                                     freight
for now we aspire as fixtures
in material void bumping
                                                                     baryons
blazoning a dogwood budbreak
greenly on the lap of stainless
                                                                     surfeit
certainly less than the sensation
I and thou must haul toward ecstatic
                                                                     expanses
expecting sundog worship, espaliered
tighter across dwarf spray
                                                                     spirals
simply to tickle the spreading
drapes, the escapement of petit point
                                                                     puddingstone
particles dark mattered prongs
of ancient twin stars Urim &
                                                                     Thummim
Munin and Hugin croak no gold, chromium,
lead, nor quintessence, not even this dogbone
                                                                     diorama

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Richard Magahiz has a day job working with computers, originally as a physicist but more recently as a software engineer. When it comes to music, food, or books his tastes are both eclectic and idiosyncratic. He spent a long time on the East Coast of the US but has come back to his native state of California. His work has appeared recently at Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, Failed Haiku, as well as in Danse Macabre, otoliths, bones, Uppagus, and Eye to the Telescope. His website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/

Author’s Comments: This poem was first written out early one Saturday morning in August 2020 in its present structure of fourteen lines each with a tag. I think I had been reading Rilke and had his strange dream-like sonnets on the mind, but didn’t want to write a sonnet exactly. I liked the lightly haunting effect and made only a few changes, mainly with the tags, since then. Now I am thinking I might try another with some of the same elements.

Image Credit: The recycled paper dog collage by artist Betsy Silverman. http://www.betsysilverman.com/