THE SPIDERY ARMS

OF SHRI TARA DEVI

for Megan Shay 10VIII09TS

She arrived an agent of Maha Kali Ma

in her blue lotus projection of Tara.

Spider woman yaga shadows crowd

the close corridors like a vapour

of missing birds

where my bodhisattva walks.

She came with the prescribed tests

and trick questions;

A ventriloquy of hunting whistles

whisper her lessons.

This alphabet of footprints

where my bodhisattva walks.

She came to the fatty feast

of primordial meat.

Roasts, drippings and sauces of blood

papers and tablecloths stained with spilled sauces

shooting like stars

where my bodhisattva eats.

He answered all the trick questions

and hurled himself at the tide of tests

and now in success he is alone,

his spine a curved path

where his bodhisattva passes

She went as an agent of Maha Kali Ma

sweeping the dirty path as it disappeared behind her

so he could never follow

into that jungle where his bodhisattva’s heart

is the wrought iron gate before the first forest

She came as a detective of yaga agency

dealing the two faced cards of royal houses naturally

juggling blackholes and stars

which light my bodhisattva’s scissors

of detachment

She came disguised in smiles and left in smiles.

Being so surprised

somehow makes him seem half restored

as he squints to observe his bodhisatva

in her favoured form dancing

amid the glints of dust

hovering in a shaft of sunlight

as we grind the bones

to a dark gravy paste

and speak of the perfect application

of foreign spices.

We laugh like an old joke.

Again, his bodhisattva teaches him

it is all a punch-line arriving.

So he is almost an old man

when her eyes flag him down,

hold him up beside her highway of ambush

while yellow straw

and gophers animate the receding horizon.