Innominata

"It is only if the word has the primary sense
for you that you use it in the secondary one"

In this wild wind
the eye holds calm;
suspended in its space he
scarcely thinks - his
life is barely with him, and
his mind hangs on in reflex
desperation. He slowly
turns within the storm's eye;
then it blinks.

He's gone;
there is a void that fills the
centre, that is filled by
booming air, that rages, surges,
calms.
The eye is still now,
iris clear, blue and empty.

*
A stream passed where I stood,
licked at my feet, ran cool
and silver to the flat horizon
where it disappeared, and
left me standing, dry
and surrounded by dryness.

*
She sat, hands folded in her
lap, in silence.
For my sake from her father.
She looked up, but
from her mother No, for mine .
And lifting these two sakes she
weighed them, held them
to the light; neither was pure,
neither could outweigh her own sake,
held hard and heavy,
somewhere out of sight.

*
A unicorn scrapes at the barren earth
with one paw, claws unsheathed;
it is alert - its amber, slitted
eyes are never still, but scan the plain
for predators. Its
forked tongue flickers,
testing the dry and dusty air.
One wing dragging, scales torn,
it turns towards the shimmer of a
mirage, hisses in a sort of
desultory despair.
Trailing ichor, drooping
with a languor that its eyes belie,
it scuttles through the dunes.
And now the unicorn has disappeared.

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