For a Heart of Gold comes from The Greenwood Poet, a book that came out last week as part of my ongoing romance with doubling my years on odd years and then writing that many poems.

I spent a couple of years, off and on, writing about the gothic fantastic and the environment and death, before and after COVID (thought that obviously wasn’t the original intent). I’m going to serialize them on the site for subscribers. If you subscribe for three months, you’ll get this for free. And besides, subscribing is free for the first seven days, so why not try out the Showbear archive?

Of course — 20% will be free for everyone and I encourage you to pick up a copy of the hardback.

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For a Heart of Gold

I dumped the sun at dawn in the Hudson

Where the fountainhead first flings tears. 

You’d think such a thing would thunk like a ball,

Headlong splash, harrowing wake, 

But the sun sank slower than driftwood,

Than small rocks. Sliding out the globe

The molten gold magma goes,

The nukes and novas and neoplasms —

Pitcher and juice — so the Prime Matter

Of the river’s form renders alchemical

Magnum opus — the molten fountain

To the dark delta drains as the light

Of the winter morning washing the city —

Gold glows and goes with the flow,

Smelting the waters, gilding the blue.

Blind me, waves, and bind sight

To the white gold washing south

As the day darkens, deem the hope 

Ready for New Yorkers, righten the wrongs.

Manhattan Midas make us more than stocks,

Philosopher’s stone leave us better

And longing for the mouth where the light moves

And leaks back into lordly black

Being in void, birthing in the womb 

Of the world’s pain — wakes carrying

Grateful and grumbling green on the vine

And the vine’s thorns, verily the giraffe 

Kicks her foal in the key thirty

Minutes at the start of mothering so the kid

Can learn how to run — righting the boat road

The liquid light leaks into the pitcher

Of dark and dusk, drawn in thrust

For the following day when fire will be called

Down from deity in the dirge of the spring

Upstate reborn over the wake 

Of the pure waters. Pray for my seeking

For the gold getting isn’t gain for me

But the being made brighter inside

Heart of gold, healed by light.

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Photo by Uvi D on Unsplash