—For the shadow puppets of Java, 2012
In response to my claim—that black
and white on written page was the oldest
miracle besides speech—the girl more versed
than I on the subject said to me:
Ink is fine (as is paper) but I’ve watched
steady hands of wavering masters cast their
visions on long walls with nothing but the small light
and the shadows that mingled in the creeping
perimeters of primal encampments, long
before we had need of the tallies and figures
from which your art derives. But please, try: arching
back and crooked claw, limbs joined by pins—
and try to write a feline silhouette, (she bent
her fingers and flared her teeth) rising up
as if from the clipped leaves and thick air
of swaying jungle trees, peering eyes and your body
flattened, the pressure on your chest. And maybe he’s a house cat,
his name is Oliver and he has a sensitive stomach
and several food allergies, but make him
the jungle cat with angled light. Make him
the curving wire, bending up like aorta
and phantom spine from paper cut-out.
And further more, she said (as if to end
a whole series of long standing arguments)
the Noble Truth is merely a manifestation
of this particular arrangement. If only
Plato could peek through the Hubble
to know how darkness consumes, that
Napoleon and Sukarno and Obama
and yes, even Lumiére with his projector
scarcely blink in the flicker of their world
before returning again to shadow.
Then she finished, and what was I?
Reduced, it’s impossible. Dancing shadow
candlelight flicker across my desk onto
the wall. There is the miracle, crumpled paper
like burning moth wings?
No, again and again. Like a fisherman
reaching and bringing up more than fish,
too deep and you risk everything. Rippling
water down my windowsill, and the miracle.
Previously published in The Mentone Special
Joe Taylor 