The Flying Moment

Me, age 15, Prom Night

'Here again there should be music. Not that wild hunting-song, Percival's music; but a painful, guttural, visceral, also soaring, lark-like, pealing song to replace these flagging, foolish transcripts--how much too deliberate! how much too reasonable!--which attempt to describe the flying moment of first love.' -- Virginia Woolf, The Waves


The Flying Moment

One season, back in '65,
when cups and saucers came alive,

when time stood down -- and up -- to death,
when dark dimensions, length and breadth,

soared off with senses, bees and birds
in a futility of words,

a purple, orange, silver kiss
anointed ignorance with bliss.

But now the world's a shadow box
of butterflies. And there are clocks:

the sun comes up, the moon goes down.
Love's just another common noun.

Yet -- somewhere -- constellations swirl
above a fifteen-year-old-girl.




Copyright © Catherine Chandler,  first published in Angle Poetry Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2013