Third Avatar, One

Leda Lamour,
Pandora Waiting

This box contains the beauty of the world –
It sits upon my desk untouched in place,
With paisley galaxies or fractals swirled
Upon a dark cerulean embrace.
It is, indeed, so starry to behold
I’m spellbound as I near this little shrine
Where mouldings worked in deeply burnished gold
Frame cobalt walls where whirling rubies shine.
It was a gift from someone I once knew,
Someone I loved, the last I loved, that now
Sits handsome, hard and coldly porcelain – through
Those waiting years I wait to disavow.
So like Pandora, yes, I know I will –
Someday, this sky will break; I wait until.

The Island of the Black Swans

Before my entrance to their magic realm
A pensive lake spreads into shimmering haze,
Then, tethered, two approach; they overwhelm –
With beauty, strength, cob whiteness, they amaze.
We land upon an island in their lake –
They signal that my foot should fall right here;
And as they wait behind, alone, I make
Towards a chapel looming very near.
Inside the gloom, a cobwebbed candle waits
Upon perusal of an open book;
All this – dream candle, gloom, and book – creates

An invitation for a closer look.
I read: “We left this place on Whitsunday;
Come worship us in Oz when end of May.”

Pilgrim's Regress

Although Jack deeply yearned and bravely fought
The serpent dragon of his soul’s torment,
From all his pilgrim travels, all he brought
Were portmanteaus of disillusionment.
He’d walked barefoot the Santiago Trail,
And climbed Lourdes’ holy stairs upon his knees,

But, everywhere, though feeling every nail
Of sun and light, his sleep produced disease.
At night, Jack travelled to far fields ablaze
With singing flowers loud with every hue;
Then in these dreams, a distant wood in haze
Would lose him and obscure his starry view.
And sinking into softness, he’d awake
With Venus rising sans that common ache.

Second Avatar, Seven

Earl Pascoe,
Difficulty with Birds

The bird in flight calls me upon its wing
As it itself, for its unbounded ride;
Its beauty turns and cuts; it swells to sing,
Just when I shut my eyes and turn aside.
On raising them again, the bird has left –
All that remains is infinitely blue;
But still impressed upon my eyes, where it once cleft:
A shadow haunts, its presence breaking through.
I want to be a wolf heard by the moon,
I want to be a tiger of the dark,
I want the stars to see, recoil and swoon
Before my howl, shriek, growl, bay, bawl or bark.
But I choose to confine that that I saw
And watch the moving skies as through a straw.

Jerome and the Flower Maidens

The fairy girls behind a daisy’s leaf
Stare, jostle, stumble, wave, jump, call, and point
Toward me as I look for my relief
Upon a silver tree and mushroom’s joint.
“Why do you call?” I ask, and one responds,
“We know the little guy who lives within
That mushroom there. He’s gone to gather fronds
For some dread spell. Oh, fear, boy, his chagrin.”
But I continue to anoint with gold
The absent fairy man’s proud little home
In spite of every scary thing I’m told
About this magic guy they call Jerome.
It ends, I shake, and just as he appears,
His mushroom home collapses into tears.

Second Avatar, Six

Earl Pascoe,

Birds of Paradise

Our garden, for perfection, needs just one
Lost shade before it blossoms fully glad –
But can this hue, by our now orphaned sun,
Return to light and life be wholly clad?
The purple of the mountains in pink haze,
The swaying mauves and yellows of the plain,
The green reach, blue of sky, and sundown’s blaze
Run fugitive before their right domain.
This absent tone is felt in music too –
A missing smell is left untouched, the taste
Of fragrant berries, thyme and what we knew
Before this orphaned time has been replaced
By insufficiencies and irksome loss,
When everything that shines is ghost and gloss.

Second Avatar, Five

Earl Pascoe,

On Waking, God

On waking, God beheld what he had wrought,
But all had changed so much throughout his sleep,
And he could not accept it; so he thought
That all should be destroyed with one dead sweep.
I’ll start afresh, he thought, and waved his hand –
With all destroyed, he waved his hand again,
And blissful stars congealed, again the land
Arose from stormy seas – man’s new domain.
And then God slept again, man holding sway,
In God’s good image, lording over all;
They knew to pray, but also knew to play
About a cosmos in their mindless thrall.
On waking, God beheld what he had wrought,
And he could not accept it; so he thought.

Second Avatar, Four

Earl Pascoe,

Carnival

We circle round the garden ground, perplexed
About ourselves and where this garden lies,
About what went before, what will come next –
We touch the ground, but scry beneath glass skies.
If every day’s our last, we must enjoy
This ground, these skies, and wander where we will,
Not seeing when tomorrow will destroy
This ground, these skies – and every dawn must thrill.
But let’s imagine we have an infinity
Of dawns to rise on us and dusks to set
And in our blindness we command divinity
And owe no other god, nor time, no debt.
We’ll sleep the long millennia away,
And dream our lives and wake for but a day.

Second Avatar, Three

Earl Pascoe,
Tennis Everyone

Come Federer, Nadal, and Murray too,
Del Potro, Djokovic, and all there best –
Our altar waits expectantly for you,
As one of you is martyred, and one blessed.
We feast each time you walk upon our court –
When all the planet watches, and fate chooses,
It’s ritual and liturgy in sport,
As we attain the win, and one loses.
So, cannibals, enjoy the broken meat –
Our priest demands our awe be unsurpassed;
And briefly honour him and quickly eat,
For sacrifices multiply there fast.
Here we all know we live in time’s fifth set –
The match that ends, we dread, with ball in net.

Second Avatar, Two

Earl Pascoe,
Entering Shiva Nataraja

We listen for the beating of his drum –
We listen very closely for that sound
We know is there within our worldly hum
In every place: beneath, above, around.
For any place is every place, the centre –
Around, above, beneath, within, it’s there
In every place and any place, to enter
The omphalos, the Tandava; it’s here:
Don’t fear the circling fires of his place –
Don’t fear the warlike cobra, for his coils
Are there for you, are there for that embrace
That leads you near his treasure, for his spoils
Lie just beyond the serpent’s venomed bite
Where peace, nirvana, leads you out of sight.

Second Avatar, One

Earl Pascoe,
Of Love and Pink Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums weigh on the bower’s bend
And frame two birds long claimed by love and sky;
That sky is sun and white as they ascend
Towards its last in answer to a sigh.
Chrysanthemums droop low within the night
And through them two small birds are heard by two
Who wander near to steal a kiss in flight
Before the crested glow of dawn cracks through.
Chrysanthemums fall still while day and dark
And sun and moon, in rise and fall to rise,
Too quickly work their long persistent arc
As lovers linger on their long goodbyes.
Chrysanthemums weigh on some hearts today,
And droop and fall while birds and lovers play.