Life with the Oximeter

Silver Skies

Life with the Oximeter
(Dedens mon Livre de Pensée,
J’ay trouvé escripvant mon cueur
La vraye histoire de douleur...)

From my index finger hung a screen,
My life’s Rosetta Stone in a bright gauge,
A secret length of yarn three Sisters spin.

And then I felt the crooked hands of age
And ruthless time. They stalked me and touched me,
Much like an antiquary turns a page

In the life cycle of book worm larvae
That take their nourishment in chronicles
Of the insect’s superiority.

A stink churns up from Satan’s thuribles,
And barrows of disintegrating learning
Are nests for new eggs, while the bite that kills

Gnaws at me in my book, where I am burning
In final fire and unremitting yearning.

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Epigraph: from Charles D’Orléans.

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Silver Skies

Snowflakes, in the cold white of Winter’s rose,
Drop their frozen petals on bare trees
And crisp grasslands, and as the basalt crows
And sapphire ravens shiver in the frosty breeze,
And dip their beaks in clumps of frozen gore,
Dark boughs bend under the slow blizzard’s billows,
And, in a somnolence of hellebore,
Frost clings to drooping wands of frozen willows.
This Winter’s silver light comes late to me
-- Its storms as white as my salt-crusted eyes --
So that, nicked by vaned barbs of poetry,
I listen to the diamond winged magpies,
As they alight on the elm’s frosty glaze,
And count the secret numbers of our days.

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...Winter’s rose...: not a rose at all. It is the Black Hellebore, which flowers in Winter and early Spring. It is also known as the Christmas Rose. Although it is highly toxic, it has a long history as a medicinal plant, and was reputed to be a remedy for mania. In ancient times Athens, some say at the instigation of Solon, brought down the city of Cirrha by poisoning the water supply with hellebore.
...sapphire ravens..: the reference is to the black sapphire.
...vaned barbs of poetry...: from Merriam Webster for vane:
• 3: the web or flat expanded part of a feather
• 4: a feather fastened to the shaft near the nock of an arrow.
The sequence of metaphor for the snowflakes progresses from the floral or vegetative, to the avian, to the feathery, and finally to fletching and arrows, all of them by analogy standing for death, rebirth, and poetry.
...diamond winged magpies...: true magpies are corvids, and are very intelligent. Counting magpies is an old form of divination or prophecy. If a magpie sings to you or answers your call it is considered an omen of good luck. Here is a familiar magpie counting rhyme:

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.

There is also a double entendre on count and number, traditional terms for meter and poetry. Cf. Herrick’s “Noble Numbers.”