Scarlatti Sonata Testament
       

Listen . . . all white foxes, all white owls, all snowy
silver geese. Attend . . . all casual fish holding on
in the icy beads of a silver current. Snow leopards,
white bears, silver baboons, mottled white mice nosing
at autumn seeds . . . pause in unison, lift your heads.
Still your wings and heed . . . silvery blue moths fluttering
like flakes of moon. Long-haired, spike-horned goats
on precipitous cliffs, white spiderlings floating
mid-cloud . . . take note and remember. Each barb
of every feather, every black-tipped ivory hair, every
luminous scale and fan-like fin, each knuckle of spine
and nail, each red drop at the pith of the marrow
at the root of all glare and mettle, every breath quiver,
every one, every single one, is beheld and declared.

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Copyright © 2014 Pattiann Rogers All rights reserved
from Holy Heathen Rhapsody
Penguin Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission