Octarine by Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews

April 4, 2023
Octarine I have shut the door on chaos. Left my worries behind me. A tangle Of branches. Fields of infinite probabilities. I have shut the door on the unknown. Entered a house of light. Signed my name in a book of names. Here, beneath a thousand origami birds My eyes look up and the ceiling spins A gallery of frames. A menagerie of light Floods the room with afternoon. Elemental transmutation. Octarine. Chromatics Of lavender and daffodil. Ultraviolet blur of gossamer. Spark of golden alchemy. Ineffable octave of harmonies. Atmospheric hues in perfect synesthesia. Witness to these stations of the heart, I am fulcrum. Here. Here is the window of the infinite seasons. Here is the wrought-iron gate in the old stone wall, Beyond which, two does with Christ-like eyes Gaze innocently upon the hurts awaiting in the woods. Here is the pale sky I have endured. The chalk-blue river of ice where my angels froze. Styx. Here I came to cross when I was lost and poetry saved me. Through the dark, dark grove are strokes of russet warmth. White-washed with morning, a house resists the cruelest days. Beyond the fields of snow, a red barn. A weathered fence. Another day of blue dissolves. The winter trees, an invocation. And always, ahead, a big May sky. Cumulus nimbus expanding Immense slate mirror above the verdant landscape. Halcyon days. Of storms brewing. The tiny mote of me Pondering the scale of murky brown terrain -tectonic shift Of ice melt. From sea to sea. This place of dreams. Then summer with its afternoons of haze. A Monet bridge Over the lily pond. An urn of red geranium on its balustrade. Stone doves, a columbarium. Beyond, harvested fields of golden stubble. October pumpkins ripening against cold hues of anthracite. A swirl of seagulls planing down. Swarms of electrons. Metallic taste of rain. Through the gazebo lattice, through foliage, trysts of photons On the water. For a split second, an eagle’s wings blot out The sun. But look closer now! Here, outside the window, The serviceberry branch is waiting for its time to bud. I will let it nest me back to the small measure of things. To the cat on his crinoline pillow. To the book of poems. The Limoges teacup on the nightstand. In tidy frames, The oceanic tide. Fractal coasts of sand, of shells. Mosaics of stones: turquoise, quartz, obsidian, ammonite. Infinity contained. The wild shellacked. The universe in me, encaustic. Previously published the anthology Consonant Lights (In Our Words Inc., 2022). Forthcoming in a collection of poetry entitled A Nomenclature for Light.