2 minute read
MARY K. CAIN - Aeolian
blind to critics, racists, politricks, politics, and all the ‘tics ticking obstacles into his path to the top in his heart
a big festival of dreams and possibilities that out of ashes
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shall rise beauties and the great
Nambu – 231
Mary K. Cain
Aeolian
I was going to write a word on the west wind
but before I could turn
to gather a pen or the red tail hawk feather
that fell into the yard or raise my index finger to test
the direction
it changed and was gone.
Cain - 232
Into the Dark
Sister Frances Dominic had a penchant for the stars. It was she who first spoke the name of Cassiopeia, emphasis on the fourth syllable: ancient queen of the night, aloft on her tilted throne. I have to turn my head like an owl to get the view just right in summer. Sister Frances Dominic loved math and science, so her story was the power of configuration, best time of year to bring the regal one to sight.
She shared none of the elaboration, the earthly braggadocio about who was most beautiful; an old insistence that has haunted women since—as much as it has astronomers who put her in the sky. There! Just see what too much pride will get you: a place, perpetual, in the heavens, your tale forgotten until an old nun revives it to her ninth-grade class. There was talk of a star-gazing party from the school roof. A trip never organized.
Liability, no doubt. Though to this day when I step out into the dark I always look up to see how she still reigns there,
Cain - 233
beauty too proud to stay on earth. Tilting my head like an owl to get a better view of her, aslant on her crooked throne.
And I wonder if Sister Francis Dominic, dead many years now, would be proud or distressed to learn that I tracked the star queen’s story to the way the Welsh told it, Llys Dôn, the Court of Dôn, another goddess; or how Chinese astronomers saw a bridge, a whip, a chariot; that Arab atlases record a hennaed hand rising in the northeastern summer view I favor. And that in India, her daughter, Andromeda, stood posing nearby; and how I have come to love the science and the mythologies, equally.
Cain – 234
