Blue Chords

Studying Savonarola (by Margaret Griffiths) on Vimeo.

Margaret Ann Griffiths

"...sun-sign heart..."

    Precious few individuals can exude charisma in text.

"...your ichor drips like honey..."

    Equally rare is an author so charming and disarming that we can relax and let their words wash over us...

"...branches bound in fasces..."

    ...without worrying about what influence she will have on us or the world at large.

"...but what you are hovers as mist..."

    Still, we are aware of their presence, especially when we stop before speaking too hastily.

"...you pass from here to there..."

    Five years after her passing, we catch ourselves trying to inventory what is missing.

"...the garden darker for lack of one golden flower..."

    We note how much paler conversations are.

Maz (May 23, 1947-July 13th, 2007)

"...would bees mourn...?"

    We note how few print publications mentioned her life or death...

"...you disperse like petals on the wind..."

    ...but we accept it as further evidence of a rare grace.

"...still a living stroke in memory..."

    Should those of us who knew her count our blessings like pensioners?

"...still the tint and the tang of you in my throat..."

    Should we revel in the taste of her, however brief it was...

"...unconsumed..."

    ...or voice our most paradoxical need:  a legion of sui generis saints.

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Studying Savonarola, he considers his lover as kindling

With your amber eyes, yellow and red
of you, sun-sign heart like a blood orange
suspended in a porcelain cage, say you burn

in a courtyard and your ichor drips like honey
on the firewood, on the branches bound in fasces,
flesh fumed in the air, dark as molasses,

but what you are hovers as mist, as the spirit
of water is invisible until steam makes the sky
waver. Say you die, scorched into ashes, say

you pass from here to there, with your marigold
eyes, the garden darker for lack of one golden flower,
would bees mourn, would crickets keen, drawing long

blue chords on their thighs like cellists?
Say you disperse like petals on the wind,
the bright stem of you still a living stroke

in memory, still green, still spring, still the tint
and the tang of you in my throat, unconsumed.

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