Baudelaire
#poetry
Elevation
Over gutters and over parking lots,
over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay,
beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills
unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known
universe, ghost, you slip out of me
with the ease of a swimmer
at one with the waves, furrowing the deep
with a pleasure we can’t articulate
as we fly from the contagion
of the world, bathing in vibrations
shed in silence from the stars, drinking up
the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.
Only when you ferry us
here, beyond the tedium and despair
that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when
animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift
up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds
trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky
and hover over life, understanding without effort
the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die
