Sylvia Rising

Sylvia Rising

History on her rosy northern skin

had traced with pain the crossed, fine

lines of vain attempts and vanished

tears, of long endured days and years and deaths

that marked her like a line of graves

waiting for the art within her charge.

Through too few years she bore the charge

of creation; from her fragile bones and skin,

and from her mingling with that grave

poetic man, the mixture of her own fine

poet’s blood with mud made life from death

and dreams that from her heart would vanish

only as the storied, vanished

bird that falls beneath the charge

of purifying fire and defies its death

to leave the self and rise within new skin,

all loss and pain ground down to fine

thin ash that blows across the useless grave.

With art unconquered by the grave

attained, she spins the words of never vanished

heart; beyond the veil of night on strong, fine

winds, she sends her poet’s charge:

Be fire that frees these words of their fine skin

and burns them to the ashes of a death

that is a rising up, the death of death.

With spirit breath, she mocks the wished-for grave,

and putting on a pure new feathered skin,

soars forth upon the wings of her vanished,

but unvanquished heart, from which the charge

of beating with too fine

a beat – hoping with too fine

a hope to find the pall of death

no longer is her calling or her charge.

Her spirit heart takes flight beyond the grave,

bearing through the cast of this dark night the vanished

hopes and dreams of verse and skin,

delivering the poet’s charge beyond the grave,

to mingle with us in a living fire and vanish

from her death into this fine new skin.