Poetry from The Literary Review
Quo Journal: Domicile Pastoral
Michael Morse
|
If your commute were internal and sun lit (no clock and no small battery of complaints), you could simply waltz the day worthwhile by sitting on your wooden floors and waiting for the room to bronze up all orange-like. Your walls could make their own Victoire, your kitchen air all sunny-baked and burnished while copper pots turn absolutely pan-ish. These streams and warbles from some underbrush can wish the score from domicile to pastoral— How now, blue Quo? Can your head-heavy traffic drive the radiator details radiant? Or should we call the day a stay-at-home and open Monday’s mail of bills and postcards? Let the wavy links of postal ink inspire some twenty cents worth of Jay, the worthy rant and rave of debt? A blue bird’s green world? Friday, rest assured, will come around again all decked out: her parasol, her hill and dale— she’ll bring her best from the great beyond, her card her purchase, a Louisiana to fill the white space you’ve been feeling. Here’s your temple, Quo, your Israel: In your head she’s already made her home.
That swarm wakens the mountain mirrored in us as if the bells we hear get fired and struck in one fell swoop, as if the compacts in our purses smack of birds. An elaboration of wings spells our travels every time we see our choices televised— a flock for the ears like first choirs heard in buildings steepled and perfumed with small fires and colored glass—the wings in our small selves some gold, some tawny. The math we’re learning is, of course, new: equations for the bootless by the booted who pull us up by their straps and make our way clear. |
