Midwest Metamorphoses: Rays
                                           Joanne Lowery

                 

                             For this morning’s performance Ovid is on lights

                             shifting the big spots so they shine slanted

                             like metal slidingboards down through the leaves
 
                             so that each of us automobiling eastward toward summer’s end

                             becomes selected today’s star, becomes lit

                             with glass, aluminum, talent, and holiness.

                             As we pass through his diagonal bands of bright mist

                             as he swivels first one then another celestial beam

                             to find us to create each our own unique shadow

                             I know it is no accident that I am here

                             stage center to speak of my love for him.

                             Let him find me let him use me let him

                             illuminate the angle at which I intersect his world

                             where the trees part just in time where the rock

                             at the corner of a crossroad reflects chrome overflow

                             and each crystal ray filtering the risen dew

                             alternates what we see day in day out

                             with the miracle of his relentless eye:

                             on the heart’s proscenium begins

                             a soliloquy of blinding whips.