“Hauntings,” “Temples and Follies,” and “A Reading”

Virginia Hooper

 

Hauntings

 

The hauntings laced themselves into another year,
Grew into miracles and fertilized the grass.
Spinning absent-mindedly,

 

A thump and a rattle intercepting my dream,
I clutched in fury to my story,
And, uncertain on which side of the glass I had landed,

 

I turned the page to the first window and climbed through.
A cord by which a weight is suspended
To test the perpendicularity or depth of a thought.

 

Anything resembling a plume or feather. To adorn, dress,
Or furnish with plumes. The thread had vanished
Through the maze lined with brilliant blue, an opulence

 

Amazing as the strutting peacock crossing my path.
The hauntings came more frequently,
Settled across the lawn, warmed the eaves. Is this the lesson

 

We were destined to create, tracing sweet edges onto everything,
Legibly exchanging all the fettered excuses
With a lovelier version dangling off into the clear deep pool?

 

A division or boundary marked or conceived
Between adjoining areas. The cord plumbed my ignorance.
The plot stretched endlessly, they reported, endlessly

 

Repeating what came to me one evening
Persuading the windows to cloud,
the stars to brighten, the moon to retreat demurely behind

 

A dark sense of urgency. As though the mist itself were a mirth
Yet grounded into body. Demanded in haste,
Given under duress, a rattled mention remained for dinner

 

Clearing the table until the chairs were neatly arranged
For company. We invited only those missing
All sense of propriety. All cleverness concealed. All desserts aflame

 

With sweetened promises wrapped in tinsel foil
Tucked under the waiting pillow. The room was elsewhere.
The explanation unravelled beyond my understanding,

 

Hedged the border with a wait and see attitude.
Every applicant was scrutinized as a potential messenger.
But me, that was the problem. Me. Trespasser

 

Pressed into service by an aimless habit, a nagging
Obsession drawing me back to the entrance. Relentlessly crippling
My desire to move on. Relentlessly sending me on

 

An errand that folded me back upon myself.
Was this the curse of my preoccupation?
Or merely my blessing. To mingle and combine

 

So as to obscure or harmonize the varying components,
The concerns, they called them, compulsions pushing through
The soil until a garden emerged, organized

 

And flowered new responsibilities — life, they said —
Kept me awake all night. The river remained the same.
But more and more, so did I. Looking the part,

 

Aimless but energized by a new vision
Acquired in darkness, stuffed into my pockets and taken home.
A fortified watchtower, squinting against the light,

 

Caught in the middle of the sacred chamber
Whose floors were laid with marble,
Whose walls held special insight into a vision

 

Pared for comfort, shaved and scaled to match the era,
Chimed the hours. Measured in the stone
Of an old extravagance, a mystery reverberating the present

 

Until lights sing, darkness speaks the spell
Lingering in the confusion, as though the hauntings
Were Enlightenment itself. The distance to be travelled

 

At any cost, its systems and roads mapping vast
Expanses of mind over matter — a mere restoration
Supporting the vaulted roof. These copies

 

And originals identical. Looking for some way in,
Circling the distance to be travelled,
I thumbed through these illustrations of the profound.

 

The cord weighed heavily upon me, sunk deeper
Than my memory allowed. Than my mother allowed.
The cord pulled me back to the old intersection,

 

Laid me bare to be dressed in the plumes of her intrigue.
But was I the trespasser? Lured back again
With the knowledge gleaned from experience, the old promise

 

Made by us both. To encircle by winding or weaving,
Endlessly revolving back to the place of origin.
The logic and elegance of the interior carried me

 

Through its argument, an alphabet building
Its own structure to house an idea hidden
In these secret vaults. I wandered aimlessly.

 

Here was design trimmed to fit
The particular niches of the puzzle, a maze of concentration
Broken only by generations turning the soil.

 

The thought stood perpendicular as a stave
Beside me, a mechanism assigning me greater responsibility,
A trick played well, posted as sentry.

 

They say crusaders were killed endlessly flitting and filing away
The various pieces of the puzzle, sited upon
An inhospitable terrain, just inside the encircling logic

 

Nature obeys. The temple had been filled with sand,
A castle subject to erosion. These were visions
We had to learn, to leave, to stand outside the threshold

 

And peer through. A story half as old as time
Traced back to a source, then broken off.
As much for the onlooker as the maker.

 

A buried circular staircase, circling toward the obscure
But recorded section of a vision sketched into stone.
The fortune lay scrolled inward toward the reader,

 

Its clear message left as a last minute impulse
To render clear the clouded window
Parted for that breath of air, the first glimpse.

 

Temples and Follies

 

Small temples and follies in the woods,
The feeling soon passes
Into extinction, or was it merely the fact

 

We reconsidered the labor of love — the rapture
Of reaching journey’s end when respite
Can’t be sought through an intricate network
Of hedged corridors, or on summer nights it took us through,

 

Sudden views of the vanished lake.
Houses should be lived in again and the landscape
Returned, which we discovered

 

Had been designed to rival Hope’s End serene romance.
The residents are always free to roam.
The feeling soon passes,
But respite can be sought as a labor of love

 

As all rooms share a graded vista
Restoring journey’s end when the guests arrive,
The original owners of the house.

 

A Reading

 

You are impatient, says the oracle.
The weather has arrived cloudy, another’s day’s conclusion
Shot with unraveling paths set back

 

From the shore. An ocean’s breeze reshuffles the cards
Across the deck, disorder restored to pattern,
A chance you pattern yourself toward.

 

Prompted to rethink your question,
Which might, with grace, lift you above the determined
Arrangement currents have washed you against,

 

You play another hand. A chance you pattern yourself
Against lifts back through selves
You have assumed, fools sprung from oracle

 

Beginnings, framed inside the gold-leaf border
Of the cards played in patience
When it wasn’t in the cards to share the evening

 

With another. And what of crossed destiny?
Teased out of solitaire, prompted by impatience,
You think you have been courted by the cards.

 

Strange, how this pattern unravels
Inside the tale arranged for the oracle’s pleasure,
A link, after all, you think.