Reading 42 - Suva First-Time
Suva First-Time
Brimstone butterflies and humming-bird hawk moths
Dart and dive before my wide asymmetric eyes.
From high above the town,
Feel the wild of whiplash wind,
The phosphorescent southern seas - blowing free;
Sea-soaring spirits balanced in glacial blue,
Shamen of the Ether, sabre-toothed
Sharp frigates in the vast elemental sky.
Rampaging jungle streams of deep exotic green,
Frame the steep turquoise decent to basalt harbour;
The electric cobalt kick,
Like a soft collision by the pool,
My intellect inexplicably ripped,
And sublime tears laid-out,
Breathless across the blue-wide bay,
(Venus at her mirror!)
And the bold rugged mountains rising,
In moist caressing heat.
Sober nun palm trees,
The very cone of pure-bred innocence,
Whose bright green pears
Arc their seductive spines to the vast pacific sail,
And quivering in the evening blush, their oiled fronds
Smelt the steel of the hot irrational night.
Radiant long-flamed hibiscus plumes chime,
And sparring chords of lyrebirds sound lyrical
In the dense emerald thrash of the under-bush,
And overhead, entangled olivaceous vines
and round lime-river moons, span
The immense cascading canopies of space.
Ion-charged magnetic maidens,
Impacting full-spectrum corollas,
Incendiary sun-fanned spices and bare blood-olives
Condense from the light Keats-fret
and flash-flood the wide arcade,
My intense boyish gaze, hitting sixes,
Live in the rainbow rain.
Long ebony-fingered curators of orchids,
Sipping passion-fruit cocktails late in the liquid afternoon,
Conjure up images of red and purple giants,
Harlequins and man-eating spider jungles
Awash with strange orchestral sounds and all that is magnificent.
A sweet-smelling perfume on a still warm night,
When two girls out on the town saunter by;
And that questing radiance,
Like a charmed-particle dissipating,
Hot-house blossom blown on the brimming bough,
The acute trembling of strings,
My wildly flagrant heart
Thundering, as the immense rolling wave,
Held on rapture’s brief blinding cusp, plasma-arching,
Flings its fine molten spray,
Cool as powder snow,
In thrall upon the soft virgin shore, and falls;
It's then;
As the violent beauty of the frisson fades,
That a giant misty orchid,
Tender and delicate beyond all these worlds,
Blooms;
Before my flushed, full-on, summer-singing eyes.
