POETRY BY DAVID ST.
JOHN
SAFFRON
Even the thin tube of Spanish
saffron
Sitting on the spice rack above the butcher block
Cooking table seems to glow with its worth
Of at least one's weight in gold & today
At the beach a dozen Buddhist monks in golden
Robes stepped out of three limousines
To walk their Holy One out along the dunes
To the water's flayed edge where the sand burned
With a light one could only call in its reddish
Mustard radiance the essence of saffron
& what I remember most of the scene as
The Holy One knelt down to touch those waves
Was his sudden laughter & his joy & that
Billowing burnt lemon light opening across the sky
* * *
BLUE NAILS (II)
Circumstance means everything
when
Night begins to creep closer to the bed
& silence is the worst lover not to
Mention the most wasteful so she sat
At her dresser naked from the waist
Up & held out first her left hand then
Her right each with a slow consideration
As if she were watching five moons rise
Now from the East & now the West
Each pale oval lacquered a nervous blue
The same neon pulse as certain tropical fish
In the clear shallows of the Caribbean where
Certainly she would one day be living in her next
& more deeply gracious life
* * *
TURQUOISE
Imagine the sky compressed within
The clenched earth
The pressure composed by deep fire
At the core of
The ether of transcendence surrounding
Us until the knuckles & nuggets
Spit high into the air
A smoldering blessing
Of the involuted skies as if even
The light above the sea had folded
Back onto itself so many times
This petrified mirror of stone we carry
Becomes a bible blue
Darkening from beauty into night
David
St. John's most recent collections are: The Red Leaves of
the Night (HarperCollins, 1999) and In the Pines: Lost
Poems, 1972-1997 (White Pine). The poems published here are
from a forthcoming collection entitled Prism.
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