And Tall Goblets Of Petrichor, For We Who Devour Our Gods

to suffer
the burden of seeing
beauty
in everything, the unquiet
ache of knowing, the peerless
stinging grief
of beholding:

the perfect polished wholeness
of each unbreathing moment, every

newfolded leaf or shifting shade of honeyed
of honeyed greygold dappling

decayed parchment of shed foliage
masking lowtrodden paths between trees, the slow

creeping blue of their pewter barkskins
and breezeshivered branches in the deepening

eventide, the white drops
of lustred moonspill in sleek mercurial shiftings

across the black dayless carpet of sea that sprawls
toward nightgreen horizon,

and every joy walks handfasted
to emptiness, and sorrow
scrawls its blue name
across the face of summer days

too much
beauty, too
much roselight, too much
to bear the weight of
throughout the endless
clocksong of days unnumbered

to wish to die
to escape it, to wish
to last

for but a single day more, or
to live, always

and hale and everyoung, til
the amber days of the unmaking
scourged of all defilement
frailty or blemish
to lift the stain

of mortality, to
taste air and drink deep
the measureless sunlight, to
plunder
the sacred larders of the deathless

that our blood might be turned
to the untarnished ichor of the undying
and all our mortal pities shed
like leaves
upon the frost:

in the veins of forever,
naught but gold,
the scent of stone
and rain.

[petrichor: the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil, from Greek petra “stone” + ichor “blood of the gods”]

 
Photo Credit: leoncillo sabino Flickr via Compfight cc

Rachael Convery

Rachael Convery is a Classicist, Maker, and Scholar; follower of Sappho and Anne Carson; devotee of Beauty and the wildancient gods; seeker of the sacred and profane; lighter of candles upon the altars of the lost; daughter of savagedivine wolves; keeper of forgotten histories; lover of small, grand, and delicate things...

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Rachael Convery is a Classicist, Maker, and Scholar; follower of Sappho and Anne Carson; devotee of Beauty and the wildancient gods; seeker of the sacred and profane; lighter of candles upon the altars of the lost; daughter of savagedivine wolves; keeper of forgotten histories; lover of small, grand, and delicate things...

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