Myth & Mariolatry
At a small village not far from Manila, in the house of armaments & munitions, in a house of grenades & ammunition, the plaster statue of the Virgin Mary as humble as a trademark, stands splashed in carmine tears like some peasant shot on a quiet morning bearing water from the creek. The hovels strewn about the hills are so many broken boxes. The sun is spinning clockwise for hope. One cloud out of nowhere & then a drape of blue that might be the sky. The gathering of people is more impressive than a food drop. They come at the appointed hour when the boy who serves as runner to the Beautiful Lady arrives, breathless, with the Word. Occasionally, the statue weeps paint-fresh tears. They will leave once faith is gathered in abundance like so many wild flowers off the nearest mountain slope. Here under a glass blown moon, a cool wind shall leave this place sacred.
Stork
The scene is of a deep rural setting done by one unhurried Impressionist, say, pre-World War 1, c.1907. Everything luxuriant, soft and round, the paint is combed out by cordial summer breezes. Countryside: Poland, a rained-on morning, the distant plash of milk into wooden pails sounds thinner than its clotted creaminess. The cobbled yard is blue and wet after the mornings sluicing; alder, elm or poplar windbreaks, but what shows through is the church spire you would observe if you lifted your gaze up from the unhitched wagon, its spars tilted off skyward from the fields, past chimney, gable, and farmstead. The stork is here on its top (though) bottom heavy nest of thickly woven twigs which throws the scene into surreal proportion, suggesting a still hour of witches and moonlight moving stealthily through the forests black patches. Stork, calm as a weathervane (a model) presides over maize and barley crops, that brighten through weeks of high summer, stretch tight as a canvas to the nearby farms, and further still, to centuries old, grassy marshlands from which the stork feeds its nestlings.
Unmanned
Take this day, lonely as a man in an empty house, at his window, the wintry yard below.
Sea calm. The moon scatters its coinage. A rubber dinghy bucks an orectic surf. Pebble beach. The conning-tower signals:
which came first, meaning or memory?
One flashlight winks hungrily under seacliffs, and then the flare. This setting becomes an habitual space, chosen era for commando or smuggler.
We make our choice, learn that grief comes regular as sunset.