This Strange Malachite Art

Jerry Craven

 January 9, 2021

            A malachite cross here surfing with grace      

                 and bathed in a star’s yellow light

            is stretching out time and purpling space

                 in defining the shape of a night.

This painting with those Seven Sisters invite

me to a childhood sky close to Rio

Tigre and one El Tigrito night

of humming owl songs and music of wings

and the warm tones of Carl’s words telling

the way Seven Sisters burn in the night

and stand together, Carl said, like the dipper

now in this strange malachite art.

As he spoke of planets and the Pleiades,

my finger traced his words through those

sizzling stars until finding made the Sisters

mine to hold forever in my racing heart,

inaugurating me among songs of nightjars

into the cosmic wonder of sister stars.

Light-years from that childhood, I hear Carl,

a man wise from Time and shaking slow

to conjure words of mourning for our sister,

then telling a plan to write another book.

My promise to help draws a dark look

from the lady who knows him best. Your brother,

she tells me aside, cannot hold a pen.

Those fingers have forgotten all keyboards,

and the hospice nurse helps him endure his pain.

He has already written his last book.

But I know a plan can help shape the night

like the malachite cross coloring space, defining

time and truth for all we’ve seen in our light.

Jerry Craven has published collections of poetry, novels, and collections of short stories. Currently, he serves as press director for Lamar University Literary Press and editor for the international literary journal Amarillo Bay. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and Science Fiction Writers of America.