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Invocation

All I’m asking is a little time—
six months, say, in a cabin by the sea.
Perched on a cliff where the ghost-white
seabirds plunge and rise. But if that’s

asking too much, we could skip the cabin.
I’m okay with a bedroll under the stars. No
mattress, kettle barely warm over last night’s
coals, dawn’s chorus of foghorn and seal.

But if that’s too much, I could live
by the wind-washed rather than the waves.
I could be happy at the edge of a canyon.
Nothing too grand. It could be the low

sun-scorched banks of a creek, like the one
that flowed by my bamboo hut in India, where
herders passed with their bullocks and goats,
belled to warn-off the vagabond snake.

I’m not asking for forever. Just enough
time for memories to dissolve and pour through
me like rain, to twirl like maple seeds & ginko
leaves, like feathers, as they drop. To fly away

like the yellowed pages of a book with an unglued
spine. But let’s say we forget about the canyons
and the cliffs. Let’s just stop for a moment
in this open glisten of time. Let us be

here in the dissolve and the pour, in the
splendid & uncertain winds that cool
as they wash through us.

Amen.

—
Prartho Sereno is the prize-winning author of five full-length collections, most recently Starfall in the Temple. Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County (2015-2017), she was a Poet in the Schools for 23 years (2005 Radio Disney Super Teacher Award). Currently, she teaches The Poetic Pilgrimage: Poem-Making as Spiritual Practice — Summers at the College of Marin; Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters online.

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