Tuesday, March 13, 2007

FAITH

The Fairy Child’s Prayer
—for Rene “Master Dragon” Navarro and painter Max Gimblett

Because the sky can never be a margin against my desire, I raise my hand to you and, in so doing, compel the swoop of the falcon with jade eyes, cobalt breast and ebony feathers. I have emptied my bag of tricks, released the barbed wire from its tattooed bracelet about my left wrist. The shade recedes as I refuse to look away from interpretations overwrought but opaque. I shall learn Faith by keeping my eyes on the sun until a life’s definition becomes a synonym for the sky’s cerulean gift: an attic door to face without trepidation. Those who ascended after their initial falls now frolic with stars swirling in the cosmic microwave background—obviating directions like "top" or "bottom" as the world is more than a diamond: its glory includes facets marred by trapped flecks of coal. You said of Life: "It is all stunning—including the shadow." The Milky Way that grazes the Maori mountains of your birthland is the same silvery cascade that threads through my hair as my mind’s eye wanders through a universe I once thought I inherited instead of something I can help paint. You nudge my memory for afternoons of pollination: lemon dust attaching to the centers of open flowers whose petals form light’s prism. The sky, you teach me, shall never drop. For in a distant past, I loved well enough to earn wings formed with gold wire, not wax: soon, I shall soar. My tongue shall yet become a bolt of white velvet I shall swathe around our planet and hold as an infant against my milk-laden breasts. When the horizon stuns again, it shall be from the sumi ink you brushed against dawn’s canvas, evoking my hands when, for the first time, they shall be graceful as they dance the new and ancient form: "Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Kuanyin Shaoling Kung-Fu Fist."