Vision at Sunrise

by Brett Rutherford

     San Francisco, 1967

Neither majestic nor unexpected
     have the sun and I
risen pale and cast in fog,
     largest to the eye
on rising, dearest when our
     insensate world, cooling,
permits it to set.

Our shadow is lithe, portends what agility
     there is
in having climbed on fiery pillars in the east;
our shadow is long, unclouded, full of promise,
our squat and burning noon-time,
     self- consuming,
is not upon us, and the glint of optimism
cools our advent. Offertory psalms are wafted
gently, lest we rise not, warm not,
lest you and I, sun, make them not see.

We are of self-expending fire, of the same stuff
          and orb —
     It is they who rise and set, they
          of the passions —
we are of one long swell of perpetual inhalation,
we will die only ultimately while they are
          altogether
     dead and resurrected in their starlit
bone heaps.

But you and the star in me are chained,
at the stone ramp we are defiled and painted,
and the feathered witches pluck out
          our hearts
     and offer them up in our own names.

How can the same sun
be beacon of my life,
and altar of my sacrifice? 

—from the poem-cycle City Limits.