Pluviophilia
My corpse has awoken from its crusade
in the other world of myth and dream,
where I failed to subject gods and beings
to whatever tenuous totalidoxy
I thought I was seeking. To verify
You exist. I suppose this is all for the best.
Infallible ideas tend to lead to holy wars,
which would end poorly, me having no army.
I imagine I wouldn’t like it either
if You were so busy developing
more comprehensive Michaelologies
you withheld this delicate rain –
The world I journeyed toward returns,
the earth a cradle made of water.
Delight of the souleye the only knowledge.
If You aren’t present, neither is the cosmos.
Harbor Mandala
. i have come to you harbor
. this morning after a nightmare
. has absconded only its anxious
. wake still within me
beyond the shoreside minnows demanding I apprehend
below the gulls perched on buoys an amorphous dream
the small boat trolling depthward subject it to reason
to beg for what it cannot see force it to signify something
. your surface a canvas
. where the cloud muted sun
. paints abstract patterns
. of deep blues shaded with greys
whatever i thought i was i could have come empty
going to see was not this handed silently greeted
wind brushing across an old friend opened
your skin creating visions my eyes invited you into my soul
. ducks float napping silently
. in the oak shade i wander by
. my sandals quacking with
. each step on my way home
Morning
The tiny harbor ripples did not begin when I happened
upon them. The breeze breezing them towards me does not symbolize
any Spirit uniting us. Ducks cluster, scatter, squawking like ducks. This is not
a performance for my eyes; I’m a human being, taken
on a stroll by his soul through his soul as each of these
souls lives its image solely for this tethered pleasure: being. I’ve finished
losing the world I thought I controlled, and the tiny flecks
of light on wavelets, where dawn and haven face one another,
remind me you speak in visions, promising prayers harmonize deeper
than soliloquies, even as the water- sparks’ patternless dancing
duets its endpoints, lineless pictograms, strange succorous listening
to a language sung in figures, one I no longer have to master.
About the Poet
Michael Collins’ poems have received Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in more than 40 journals and magazines, including Grist, Kenning Journal, Pank, and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water, won the Exact Change Press Chapbook Contest in 2014. A full-length collection, Psalmandala, was published later that year. Another chapbook, Harbor Mandala, is forthcoming in July of 2015. Visit http://www.notthatmichaelcollins.com/ for more