Seth Jani
Horse Valley Nocturne
Clouds black as someone’s passing out.
Birds like skeleton keys
Unlocking the sky.
Bulb-lit pages buzzing with texts
And codas.
Whiffing the luminous
I trail my heartache
Down to the river’s
Glass dominion.
I catch fish in the stone’s
Small pools,
Watch dragonflies
Skirt like blue storms
Over the rifts and hedges.
I want no more stories
That do not lift me deeper
Towards the earth.
No more angels unless
They’re black and full of worms.
The fireflies are like living sparks
In the mind of matter.
I catch one thought in my hand
And follow another
To some haunted oak wood.
There, they string the leaves
Like tiny ranges
Gas-ovening the night.
Death is like this,
The barely noticed breath
Of the other world
Permeating your lungs
While you sleep.
In your dreams it appears
As perfect summer clouds
Drifting over.
As someone’s lost mare
Nudging your face,
Delicate and cream-white.
Her soft fur all you cling to.
Seasoning the Ship of Death
It drifts with no other cargo
But the salt of your experience.
The riches, pains, crystalized days
All sprinkled on the darkened planks,
The deep materials.
It has no name, no destination,
No captain but a strong, courteous wind.
And each grain, lost or added,
Causes beautiful delays.
Autumn Equation
That luminous trail cannot be traced
By any hand.
It shuttles between worlds
Carrying the birds and their small apples.
One day turning a corner we may find
The wind has many sides.
Sea Cliffs
Whatever the sea is
It lights the mind
With its arrival.
White water, and the
Dancing froth,
Gull-colored clouds
Over darkened barges.
North of memory
A wildness
Opens in the brain.
We were home here once,
And could be still.
