Addressed to the Being of the Dark Beneath

Addressed to the Being of the Dark Beneath

New Moon   December 1, 2024

Rise I call you into glowing motion
Devious dweller in pressure
Cold current of truth
You are found where you were not looked-for
Cambodian salmon carp we call you
Though you are no one named
 
Improper presence, please rise
Swimming with Chinese youth
Thousands gently smiling along lamp-lit highways
Surging toward the famed soup of Kaifeng
 
Ordinary snail of prehistory without a shell
Hermaphrodite bioluminescent deaf one in love
Divine self-subsistence is also a curse
 
I call you I need you in the slipstream with me
For I too often imagine in error:
Seeing no one & nothing but dark
Feeling only the cold current
 
Willow catkin clouds sporadic lilt & dangle
Its aspirin music tends to tear the morning
Into pink devastating halves:
The one just goes fleeing for its life
Because it can so I follow you in
To the sea of images drawn from wet net
 
How long, you ask, & I say
Try to see
 
Tonight we become smelt of the moon
Globes of circling silver inked pupils
You float upward, parched white coral face
Flooding to & fro
 
Someone—you?—knows how to sing this ocean
As a prayerful cataclysm
 
I pause in mid-breath on the fish ladder
Are we not holy?
For I am dark as you until winter
In fading pink given over to the other
The break was not a kindness
But a still space
 
You, Being, know me as caesura as I know you
You, Dark Presence, as out-breath, empty
Give it over to me once more
I vow to ease it swift return

Poem by Qayyum Johnson.

Painting by Suiko McCall. Baba Wawa, 2019. Ink on paper, 12×12″. Original in a private collection, prints available at suiko.art.