Le cru et le cuit

I.

It begins with a split.
Then another,
then another.

Ever more,
     increasing at a geometric pace.
Warm.
Nursed with fluid
passed through another.
Steadily now,
taking hold.
Beginning.


A pulse.
Suddenly,
and without
     a single breath of air.

No larger than
a grain of rice,
a crumb of bread

an apple seed,
even.
And onward
it proceeds,
Gently cradled
Inside that dark.
waiting.
You might say,
    living.

Later,
A hand.
now and then
it tests its grip--
     squeezing.
Harsh tones
from somewhere
beyond
all thought,
or comprehension.


II.

Nothing that resembles "thought".
Just more of that constant and
all-consuming suckling.
Automated.
Senses too,
but
the manifold of perception
is indistinct,

alien.

From one there were many

and

E plurbus unum. 


III. 


What can now be called sound
is recognizable.
It shapes and it colors.
There is no vision.
Not even eyes.              
Just vague impressions,
noises from beyond the black.

Nurtured in that ambient dark
raised in a primordial
translucent sea.
Larger still. Now
a sense of
difference.

Fostered  adrift
in an inky space.
"must leave.
cannot abide this

constriction."

IV.

It is time now.
eyes open and are blinded.
blinded by that black
--ever pressing--
sense of
imprisonment.
All around
that pulse,
and sounds getting clearer.

It is time.
Push now.
Breathe.

And out,
into that blinding

light.

Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron

Trillions of stars
and not a single one visible
from this vantage.
The farther one travels,
the more remote the locale,
the more those grains
of light
shine through
that mauve velvet.

When the moon appears
                               
she shines brighter than all else.
Pale, incandescent,
monochromatic, yet
with a vibrancy
that burns a silent flame.
Her movements through
the firmament shepherd
those tiny flecks of light

--if the moon appears.

And only on the rarest of occasions
--When shadows are cast
over so great an expanse--
is her radiance fully obscured;
Extinguished in the umbral void
beyond terra firma, beyond

During these minutes,
when all that exists is
the panoply of minute
droplets of light,
is when their assured fulgor
seems but a cheap imitation--
a vulgar copy--not meant
for even the lowliest of
sinners.