Ghost of a Trance

Ghost of a Trance

by Nathaniel Mackey

 

    Gray morning, blue morning, a

feather blown between. Mashed

  earth incumbent, gone up from,

                                                             never

      more naked if ever to be naked,

        brink what it was to be on...

  Where next we came stick-figure

    people greeted us. Abstract

                                                       was

abstract, also something else. Line,

    shape, extension each other

   than itself, of number we'd have

       said the same... Aspect arrested

     us, riveted we stood... Stick-

   figure epiphany held us in our

                                                           tracks,

       everyone's bones in full view...

                                                               Gray

     morning, blue morning, an unheard

string between. Bad heads' morning

   reluctance, ennui's next-day dispatch...

                                                                           We

       were chill, shiver, exegetic sweat, backed-

     up interpreters put upon by sluff, none

of us could say what was what. Pale

  admonishment poised upon lack,

                                                               like

     to unlike, pale strain recumbent, re-

       combinant, rude amniotic straw...

   Took leave, leave long since taken,

                                                                  awoke

       to what would otherwise not have been.

We contested birth, we wanted to be pre-

  andoumboulouous, done-dead gnostics

                                                                           again...

     Sound bubbled up, it kept bubbling, sonic

   residue, sonic remit. A fickle sonance,

fraught sonance, warning we knew nothing,

    stick-figure entourage otherwise issue-

  less, beginning to be remiss it seemed...

                                                                           Erst-

 while ecstatics' lapsed enchantment, trance

     gone none could say since when...

                                                                    Ghost

        of what lifted us, ghost what lifted us,

                                                                             erstwhile

      enchantment between... Fell back, full-out

  extended. Pilgrim someone called me, I said

    no, then I said yes... Brax was on the box

was what it was, toned uncertainty Stick-figure

       counsel all air, edge, angle, down from where

                                                                                          we'd

      been and we were again where the Alone lived,

          adage, had it not been so abstract, it might've

        been... Long day of the abalone-shell sunset...

                                                                                            Stood

           among redwoods expecting the worst... What

        was of note and what abjured nothing. What

                                                                                          was

      all, none, one, all the

   same

                   _________________

      It was a ghost of a trance. I was a

guest of the trance. What went on we

  blamed on the ghost... It was the

        ghost of a trance, each of us a 

                                                               guest

    of the trance. No two times were the

                                                                       same...

       When we hit a wrong not we said

   nothing. When we hit the right note

      we said so what... Tell my horse,

        we were told, fluke solace, horse

                                                                    we

       were mounted by... What was done

        was done by the ghost, gray morning,

                                                                             blue

     morning, eternity be-

   tween