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There are wheat fields here,

      but tasseled corn

      silk threads among the kernels,

      plump hard

      unique and uniform

      husking—the silk is everywhere.

Imagine Alexander's hand

      led to the silk,

      the girl holding his young wrist

      guiding it

      to her youth, the poised

      bone of her pelvis

      and its trembling muscles;

the days she avoids him

      proud of her blood

      knowing her womanhood

      her own blood,

      which he never learned, not even

      from Aristotle.

 

Green hair—Europa in kelp

      bride unbidden

      from Tyre

      on the back of the bull

      through the sea

      to Crete

      become the land

      olive, spruce

      fused, unfolding

      fulcrum

      pivots the continent

      she birthed kings.

 

A schoolgirl her yellow smock

      blue French hat with lavender

      her mother pinned

      she dreams of the sea

      Greek islands of her father

      a holiday, holding the handle of

      a green and yellow basket.

 

North is fictitious is ice blue,

      calm of a frozen summer sky

      placed with tongs

      a solid moment

      edges cutting

      all that has four sides.

 

Enter the blackness red lips

      you of the blue eyes

      origin and end

      Rhadamanthys waits

      to judge his brother.

      Black bull carrying the world

      infrared its thousand muscles

      spark contracted

      and the great release

      throws land

      and sunlight

      jostles the winter mist.

 

By the lake she washes the gown

      the god gave her

      lays her head down

      as it dries

      on clover.

 

 

                        --Kent Chadwick