THE DESCENT OF JUPITER OVER THE MAROON BELLS

When first I looked up

He seemed

An idea in the center

Of a cube of ice, a floater

In the eye of the sky;

But then, with sulfur

On his breath

And thunder in his speaking,

Jupiter descended,

Seated on a golden

Eagle as wide as the sun.

What he said is now lost

To timelessness,

A state no living poet knows

And thus, as my living

Hand writes this, the last

Remaining murmurations

Of his words have been

Sutured by air.

He had ended all exile

With a wave

Of his hand

And from the same

Motion twenty

Mountaintops fell:

The careless avalanche

Falling upwards

And quickly corralled

By his glance

Into quintessence of mist.

I bathed in the freedom

Of his rain.

But then I thought,

Without thinking it

Because who knows where

He ends,

About how, in my heart,

Part of me had

Liked being lost

And finding

In the pathways

Of the stars

The way to a path and,

If fortunate, to a welcoming door.

Is there a feeling

That can replace this?

For feeling, real feeling,

With all its faulty

Architecture, is

Beyond a god’s touch.

Is there a feeling

That can replace it?

Or am I condemned now

By decree,

Like the starving bear

Who climbed the fence

And slaughtered my neighbor’s goat,

To be what the god considers free?