Invocation (Sean Ali)

Invocation

Walking mistrust
The knife in the heart
The smart kiss lust
Persuasion her art
You,
            my angel,
                        pure light
            and devoid of will
While that one with fall
Knocked from a great height
Laps up the metallic blood spill
Makes the promise of death to forestall

Sauntering disinterest
And a trust that’s been missed
Your trust has been placed in the mist
And you dead ones
            lying under faded stone:

What wine have you tasted?
On what crags were you tossed and left alone?
What women have you kissed?
What tryst of dawn left you afire in ossified bone?
From what perils have you hasted,
Where the heart as a sculpture stood
When all the rest had abandoned the good?
What end did you meet in that shadow of a standstill?
By what mysterious force, what unknowable will?