Shadow Ritual

author’s note:

“There were giants in the earth in those days.”
                              --  Genesis, 6:4


SHADOW RITUAL

Two-headed black dragons
once sashayed over this ridge

in the company
of women in leopard skins,
tall as trees and rippling--

while the thunderbird bred
in a sulphurous volcano--

and monsters dressed as boulders
drum rumbled the valleys

--until time rang its bell
and our imagination drove them all
deep into the mountains.

We have suffered their absence,
we grow lonely for the miraculous

and beat the ground dry
with an iron rod
in the anger of our hunger.

But though behemoth saber cats
have shrunk down
to household cats
and purr in soft dreams--

occasionally--just
to remind us--
the dispossessed gods
agitate into lightning
and strike a planter down
in his furrow--face down
in the dirt, his mind and body
racked by disease--an army
of a million saw-tooth microbes.

I protect myself
from such infestation
through obeisance--

behind my white home,
--in a circle where
grass fears to grow,
a bare earth window--

I kneel to pray--

here the shadow giants can hear me

beg forgiveness
for the woes of my ancestors,
beg forgiveness
for my own woes--

I honor those thunder megatons
as the mighty lords of our dark Earth.

I can feel them rise and begin
coursing through my bloodstream,
I can feel them strengthen me
with a purple passion
that feeds my coal furnace.

My flame burns blue and red.

© 2008, Michael R. Patton

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