On This Mountain

Red Planet

R is for the revisit, and the allusions to truth.
Did you ever get to 2065? Meghan asked.
Maybe, The Sage said, don’t really know.
But you saw Apis, Meghan asked, was it terrifying?
It looked like a god itself, like Ptah.
You saw that, Meghan said, or someone told you that?
I don’t know, The Sage said, you can’t trust memory.
It was Plutarch too, and Abydos.
What of Abydos? Meghan asked.
The images of bull heads, shiny and star-spangled.
Half-buried in desert sand, as if the land was a grave.
The sand was red, like the sand here.
The heads were in a queue, single file and unwavering.
All of them were angled slightly, as if in wonderment.
All pointing to the sixth moon, which had turned pink.
Which part of that was Plutarch? Meghan asked.
You mean the memory? The Sage asked.
I mean the recollection, all the fine details.
The difficult details, The Sage said.
That’s where memory gets messy.
That’s where Plutarch and I have moments together.
In between, where our thoughts intermingle.
In a kind of cosmic soup, a swamp of these details.
The details are very important, Meghan said.
Not always, The Sage said.
We saw Moriah, how it was a range of mountains.
Not one mountain on which teetered the sacrifice.
There were olive trees dotting the south side.
There were Kermes oaks old as the ruins beside them.
There were Syrian junipers like on Mount Hermon.
What did it feel like to be up there? Meghan asked.
Like a slice of heaven, a bit chilly.
But the wind wasn't a biting wind, it was soothing.
It was like an evensong.
And here, Meghan said, you recall all the details.
It would seem so, wouldn't it? The Sage said.
But I've only described the particulars.
And? Meghan asked.
These particulars are just illusory, The Sage said.
Another part of the fragmentary and broken.
There was also Herodotus, let’s not forget.
The way he cascaded in, along with his version.
His version of what? Meghan asked.
Of the divine bull, and how it came to be.
The Sage said this, while pointing at the red sand.
Then the moon, which had turned a swirling red.
A deep dance of red, intense as spinel.
Then, the colours arrested their movement suddenly.
That sudden truncation, The Sage said.
That’s what I remember, the moments that hold still.
That’s how Apis was conceived, out of love.
Not by birth, but a vast shaft of light from the sky.