Poetry & Portraits: Mystic

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Mystic
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on June 10, 2017]

It’s simpler than you think. A note will cup
the monastery bell, and birds fly up
as if the vault they soared before was but
a painted blue above a virgin, shut
within the coffered shadows, while outside
a firmament awaits and opens wide
the gates to topiary gardens, green
and opiated with an April sheen
we haven’t seen since cradled in our eggs.
But even paradise degrades and begs
forgiveness—give us one more Sabbath—then
the hopeful exodus begins again
with migratory whisperings of home:
the scent of stone, or profile of a dome.
An ebb and flow believes and disbelieves:
no need to talk in terms of innocents and thieves.

Copyright © 2017, 2019 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line.