From "Phoenix Memory"

WHAT THE SOLDIER SAID: "Another sacred bird is the phoenix; I have not seen [it] myself, except in paintings, for it is very rare and visits the country (so at least they say at Heliopolis) only at intervals of 500 years, on the occasion of the death of the parent-bird. To judge by the paintings, its plumage is partly golden, partly red, and in shape and size it is exactly like an eagle ... It brings its parent in an [egg-shaped] lump of myrrh all the way from Arabia and buries the body in the temple of the sun ... I give the story as it was told me--but I don't believe it."

MOUNT PALOMAR started where you became. Dove that returns with branches. Notice. Humbler bird in a gray egg, scar and pit, blasted shell. Became the tender contents in waiting. When the letter came its print: To Lucius Reader and your address in capitals: The government. The summons reached under your gut where you keep your stars. Sense of yourself the one they wanted. Clear, fierce, stinging sense, beyond the belt of vegetation. Hesitation, knowledge.

SET THE WORLD ON FIRE on very slow fire. For humans at first. Nothing much will appear to be happening. A little warmer and faster, a little faster, elsewhere a little closer. A swathe strikes up, keening the future, when instead of if. Momentum happens to jerk arm out of socket. Friction accelerates: By the tail proceeding to all of us. Our solution and that hero was you. For your grip, you become our beacon into temperature. For your ability to tolerate high speeds. Find us the phoenix secret of eternal acceleration with no cost. How to handle or escape its gravity. Our blood boils easy to bemoan.

(I JUST NOTICED how much I love to use things up. Throwing in the garbage a juice cap "as smooth as ivory and as round as the sun." Plastic. Orange, of course, would have made a good component for a third-grader's homework: Make a model of the solar system. Eggshells, ingredients. Yarn and fabric, paper: As they dwindle, I feel immense satisfaction. Only then start to use them sparingly.)



Sources:

Herodotus, The Histories, transl. Aubrey de Sélincourt, Book II, p 130. © 1966, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.

Lewis, Clive Staples, That Hideous Strength, p 286. © 1943, The Macmillan Company, New York, NY.











Kate Schapira lives, writes and teaches in Providence, RI. Her work has appeared in a number of print and online publications. She's working toward an MFA poetry at Brown University.






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