A purpose unseen from here

Happy Birthday, Cyrano

Between life and legend, we are each delivered
to the days we will inhabit. Bodies of breath and
becoming, we move through our time as if born
to do so. Brave-boned in bluster, we take the small
hills abandoned to our victories, flat summits made
for brief flags we keep handy in some back pocket.

Yours was the Gascogne majesty of a white plume
inscribed with an heir of another’s blood, yours too
ignoble and Parisian to ever allow it be forgotten
in the hands of a playwright. Yours would be a tale
not so much truth as trifle and triumph, your name
an echo that sets bells still within these welling ears.

This was your day as it is mine, arrived and departed,
as aimless birds cross and recross broken skies like smoke
and feathers charged to a purpose unseen from here.
Some might call it religion or, worse, a radiance wrought
of divine origin the science of your reason will never confer.
This becomes destiny and, as you sang, you leave it all to us.

Joseph Gallo
March 6, 2012