The tamarack falling, no one around,
The one hand clapping,
The grail, locked in earth,
What good do they do,
Beautifully moving the air
Or shining in the darkness?
Stella, up in Kingfisher Tower,
Not jailed princess but woman
With a candle and a notebook, bends
Above the waves sloshing against the stones,
Above the paths sprawling, spraddling from shore,
Below the cirrus circus, all the clouds like clowns piling
Up-up-up in a pyramid-with-moon over hills,
Or this: Stella, peering from Kingfisher
At the great, uncracked, trackless pane
Of winter lake, the faint aurora borealis
Washing across ice and snow.
A woman, a lake named Glimmerglass,
A tower not waiting for a mailed knight,
The lake tower named Kingfisher…
Nobody to see, nobody to know
That Stella goes calling up, singing
For mystery—packing, setting
Out for distance, for horizon,
Her hands twisting words into a distaff, a staff,
Pulling words like clay into a potter’s, a beggar’s bowl,
Hammering them into the shape of a pail.
And then her footsteps go ringing on ice, on shingle,
Steps answered by glass harp echoes
That might really be the praise
Or mischief of a nymph named Echo,
Steps headed for regions of Lost-and-Found,
Headed east of the sun, circling
West of the moon and moon bows,
Looking and not-looking
For the fount of things, for gold
Springing, jetting from a basin,
Looking to stand in waterfalls,
To be thrusting upward, to be beaten down,
Looking for the pointillist stem of a rainbow,
Looking to be unhooked, utterly
Lost and falling-away like a star,
To be leaping from the very brink,
Tumbling, slipping, sailing
From the edge of a world made of words,
Trusting that the tingling soles, bare in summer,
Booted in winter, will find
Ground, that gold
Is meant to fill a pail,
That astral, kestrel, minstrel
Journeying will close with snow
Or lapping waves, the guttering
Flail of fire in wax, the last
Pinprick of night-owl light
Burning for miles around, candle
Winking from the tower.
Marly Youmans is the award-winning author of thirteen books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent novels are A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage,Glimmerglass, and Maze of Blood. Her recent poetry books are The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011), The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012), and the long post-apocalyptic adventure, Thaliad (Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal, 2012.) "Prothalamion for Linnet" and "Night Journey from Kingfisher" are from a series of poems inspired by oríkì.
"Night Journey from Kingfisher" © 2015 Marly Youmans. This poem may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.