Just Before Dawn Venus In Leo Between The Moon And The Beehive Nebula Poem by Patrick White

Just before dawn Venus in Leo between the moon and the Beehive Nebula.
The chimney of the old shoe factory reflected
like a toppled obsidian obelisk in the Tay River.
Couldn't sleep. Now I'm heading home with the bats and the ghosts.
I've firewalked enough tonight, and the coals are beginning to dim
in the ashen light of my waning spirits.
The Perth Soap Factory still hasn't managed to imperialize
the fragrance of the last of the wildflowers crowding
the crumbling parking lots and leftover wedges of field,
but it's trying. I envy a squirrel its quick Zen energy.
And three crows think they know something about me.

Happens a lot in a small town, as I know you know,
because someone you know told me. You must think
I'm crazy talking to the air as if it were you,
but even out here, you've been inside of me all night,
and now it's time to make some space for you beside me.
I like the feline water sylphs that follow me home
like feral cats in the early morning when there's dew
on the brass heritage plaques of the lawyer's offices
with ultramarine peacock's eyes waxing in the windows.

I've been learning to play Jeremy's violin on my spinal cord all night
to see if I can get you up and dancing like a kite with no strings
in a gust of stars. But so far all I've managed in my solitude
with you as my intriguing familiar is a happy kind of hangover
from a seance just you and I attended. But I'll get better.
You'll see. I'll master this new medium of picture-music
half way between witchcraft and mystery. And beyond
if you want to walk with me that far. Or fly, if that suits you better.
Pick a star. Or the softer option of a nebula, knowing you
as I'm beginning to. Alcyone in the Pleiades, perhaps.
Or maybe an unknown destination that exceeds
the wavelengths of the speed bumps of the asphalt starmaps.

I'll go there with you. And I'm as loyal as a skull.