In the seralio,

	a cold mistral wind whips through open windows,

	carries away a carillion of lilting voices.

perfumed smoke floating serous

through the air at dusk.



Above the seralio,

	moon glides smoothly across a ballroom floor

	silently, in a gown of alabastrine sequins

trailing glitter fragmentings,

glowing pageantry.



Empty portico

	within the walls, the full-moon-day has past

	the women preening, priming their glossy feathers

bodies wrapped in lustrine lace,

a dance will begin.



Elsewhere a man sits

	no evidence of what he is thinking.

	Does he feel the anticipation of the full moon

day ending, night beginning?

Stands, turns, dons his hat.



Upon the mountains

	Candlelight and lamplight flickers,

	pooling in the cradle of the fluttering city.

Arcadia running down

into the seralio.

 

One ritual ends,

another about to begin: out come

the women, laughing, flouncing, sequacious yet alate, 

stepping deliberately into

evanescent mist.



Luna presides now

	full above, catastasis: stand, turn, twirl

	something wild... a girl smokes outside, leans against wall

hand in pocket, missing the

point of the exercise.





The periphery

	is where some people watch the merriment,

	never comprehending the whirlwind of gaiety

or why women are shut inside

their own living space.



A bright, open hall:

	lute, harp: not seraphic, a throbbing drum

	elegant but with a pulse, beating against the heart

of the seralio, washing

up against the hills.



In the azoic,

	was there this pulse?  did it begin in the womb

	of the planet-or like a lattice, descend upon the seralio?

What ancient beat created

this costumed reverie?



It will deliquesce,

	this mood wrought of fig-stars and cool pursed lips,

	seductive luminous light fading as the music

sighs and begins the waning

song of tomorrow.



Was it the artifice

	of the womanmind, cloistered for generations 

	in the seralio, that birthed this shimmering dance--

or the moon itself, flowing

through the mountain air?

			Silver is

				the color in between dreams.

			silver is (of course) astral

			silver never bleeds.  silver slips.

			Silver the jewelry we used to adorn ourselves with

				always silver-never, ever gold

			(gold was of this world)

			Silver the hair

				of a boy i left behind

					he thought that because he hair turned silver at nineteen

					he could play the lone wolf and brood about

					arms defiantly crossed over his chest: look i am silver

				A Parisian waif once called me the man of gaps,

					he wrote to me in a letter traced in silver

					penned by a mind of some unknown color.

			silver is either more or less true.

			silver flows

			Silver is outside

				the rainbow.

next / spin