XII  THE HANGED MAN

“The river’s tent is broken…”
         T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

i

The hanged man remembers a time
when the sun was above him
& the earth below,
& remembers
the crackling of fires.

“Now I know how monkeys feel,
hanging by their tails,” he says, “or how
a triangle feels.”
This is the time
to reflect on geometry: his folded arms
horizontal like the earth,
his body perpendicular
like an upside down tree.

Around his head
a sunburst glows
with passionate flames,
& he knows he’s a lamb no more.

ii

The dam is forced, the flood
careens past our windows,
its current
rumbles.

Upside down now, in the trees,
we all remember
our ancestors’ days as primitive shrews
& their leaps from branch to branch.

Again we are accustomed
to the sun at our feet,
leaves shading our bodies, the earth
a wise serpent at our ears.

We eye
the birds
& with them
we fly.

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