AESCULAPIUS’S GRIP

Out of Aesculapius’s grip I slip,
a lean, shaven wraith erupting from dust,
my shadow unwinds itself from his claws,
and I emerge—an inkling of breath
in the open sky’s electric conspiracy.

Health looms like a lover, half-formed,
a promise lurking in the fissures of sleep,
she prowls into my room, leaves fingers trailing
through corners crammed with forgotten mirages,
her touch reconfigures the air, the sheets, the self.

Yes, you, wild echo of laughing caverns,
lawless herald, bearer of the wine-stained torch—
how I have longed for your mythic embrace,
you creature of Pindus, crouched in the folds of mountains,
sworn to the faith of Venus, the fierce fangs of Bacchus.

Bring me out of Petersburg, that mausoleum of voices,
where hours idle in cold columns of marble talk,
where tongues flicker like wet needles,
drawing silence from silence, and boredom breeds its kind
like a tired whisper that slithers through glass.

Instead, open the path to hills unraveled,
to fields bursting from the seams of reason,
to the maples aching for sunlight
by the river that wears a coat of stars,
to all the uncharted liberties that earth hoards.

And in October, bring the splintered cup,
let it tremble in our hands as we fill it to the rim,
we’ll raise it to the fools with waxen eyes,
to those who are shadows of their shadows,
to the heavens that bleed from hidden suns,
and to the earth-bound Czar who dreams he rules.

:: 11.06.2024 ::