Poem: The Third Day by Chris Macalino

The Third Day

By Chris Macalino
​QuailBellMagazine.com

​ After the light
day and night
the sky
 
Came the land
seeds of plants and trees
 
We were only ghosts
the light of another day
Turning as leaves 
​

rings of trunks
already to your praise
Become poetry
 
I'll be there as a clear
window of thin air to sail
 
Only sure to prepare
what was true in act
& what remains real
the third day
 
Like water crashing
always a way
Telling time along
An advent of lives
 
Before oil was in tubes
glass was shaped
breathing craft
 
The love story hidden in
cells and elements
Making secret decibels
that shook time.
 
In the deep
It was your laughter
On the surface
 
not a reflection,
But an idea of
purity as harmless
To itself
 
when I submerge
to your depth
"I’d rather weep"
 
Not because we are one
how come it's funny
After the fact
 
That living in a dream
where no man
set foot
measures
 
but changes please
drink the fresh
lemon juice that
forms a cure
 
The water becomes
Your sign the shape
 
painters will groove
 
I'm just a needle
And your memory
an invention
 
The vinyl records
make ears
wings the same
 
Your voice is under
tense of a flowing
Light I contact
 
warmth of a Sun
a moon that shows us
the vault reaches around 
Quickly growing
 
The speed announced
pressure brewing
the pit of weapons
 
Which will be quenched
By your laugh at my expense
& so at long last
 
Blood thickens
With shades of maple
layers create paths
 
that purity reinvents
Lost then replaced
By cruelest sight
 
a color blue
Will in turn be red
sadness comes
A martyr rises
 
virtually
true Enough
but not really all
you could say it's
To find them words
 
never dreamed
In all of my predilections
I could find the poet
Making nature appear more human
than what is really possible.
 
I could see your eyes in rocks
I don't mean statues, except for
gladness within the stone,
To be held in all of creation.
 
Your birthday and its wish
tells me you're ready
To be put together with poems
my action to call
stones that will kill me
in a religion too difficult
To steal and profit from.
 
am I an untrained sculptor?
taking the shape without
The rest of its days /back
Where only words are
Within subjects.
 
orange being your sweetness
mountains being your riches
seaweed being a lace
 
the account
of you as the moon
a thief made that
true, the moon told me
About your followers
 
But the moon I felt
Was not yet /the moon was still earth
with all wanderers.
 
Each day lasts
forever light
 
I've seen details of this
And believed
 
What end would it take
For a day to become another?
 
The split
of plants and trees
Writing the rule to mean
A flat time
caters to you.
 
order operation makes
Light of sky, of seeds
makes seeds rain
Makes tears of oceans
cycle as dandruff snow
 
math involved
Light again
A vault routine
 
succeeds
dimensions for canon
surrealist ice-cream
Melting the viewer between
Super transformations
 
a summation values
your heart as gold
Invoking gold to mine
embedded within rock
showing deposits love
revealing cruel intent.
 
A bird will happen
 
The trees are ready
sticks that seem to draw
a lift of decibels
heard with feathers
 
fish will reboot seas
to flow in new life cycles
compose systems
test our timelines
room is being done
 
take some blueberries
Crush into a jam
rub them on cave wall
will darken
the figures turn in shadows
 
The Prairie Poets were drinking me under the table…
"If you turn a stone, you'll find a poet."
then the opportunity finally came
To find that poet
a suspicious rock was positioned /keeping secrets.
Expected to find a magical key beneath,
I turned it /saw insects swarming.
not the naming I hoped for
floored me /stop between
identity and mistake.
 
tried the stone back to position /as if
but I had broken the seal
of metaphysics involved,
turning the stone was turning the poet too.
peek inside one's mind
a wormhole requires backstitch.
 
nightmares about the paradox
turn pages, the unexpected tries.
 
We shouldn't alter the past by bending tomorrow
 
the side we chose reasons
 
a pamphlet away to being right.
 
sky pattern of hands
pace honey
heard forever
 
in prisms of conscience
prior knowledge.
 
gunning down an Archaeopteryx
Valentine's Day just because
Angels made your list of moral purpose.
 
singularities of science have credit to bronze,
a couple of days in eternity
begins with relativity
 
seconds live in the moment,
minutes passing
hours of work
 
to look back /the years
take comfort
It's our plastic anniversary.
 
the respected ones
have experience
they are the rock
 
stand on their own
to take care of business.
 
one must step forward
never forget a pebble
to suck on /pass a desert
 
produce enough saliva
To travel through a heatwave
an actuality
to the elements.
 
color wheels, vanity, and the existential
poetry can't be substituted.
 
Beautiful shoes
right words in their place.
 
suppose being broke is
"Just a scratch, a scratch!"
 
to make the deal
shed a few recyclables
 
Before wanderers prepare the skies,
Take the day /bind it to their schedules, 
take the night
 
there would be some organization
Where poets come together and read work,
enough to provide for all,
 
in the making /for it is not our time,
calculate two more generations until the type is bold
dedicated to light a way for the reach.
 
The sea is a language and has many lives,
 
Changing forms like ice, fluids, and vapor;
 
oceans in all the directions,
 
we could be linked /to this language.