Ash

There is an ancient bird perched,
perhaps she used to be red and gold,
now ashen and smutty
on the dead tree in the desert.
She gives one last croaking call
before collapsing to the ground
beneath the twisted black branches
and bursting into flame.
When the phoenix dies
and rebirths herself,
she lays two eggs,
one white, one drab.
In her fiery demise she passes
from this land to the other world, briefly,
to sojourn until she has renewed
her youth and her plumage.
The bright egg cracks open,
the phoenix-chick emerges anew
as the sun rises from the horizon each morn,
her face freshly washed by the ocean waves.
(In the beginning,
everything was female,
for only mothers can give birth,
and first did so of their own volition.)
(The phoenix is not a symbol,
the sun is not a simile,
nothing is a metonym,
everything is not a metaphor.)
The phoenix is alive, aflame,
red-gold with burning, crowing,
singing in liquid syllables of immolation
the joy of movement and light.
From ashes to ashes,
she dies and is reborn;
in soot she conceives herself,
in soot she eliminates herself.
These are the mysteries of the firebird,
who emerges from the white egg,
flaming red and brilliant,
only to subside into charcoal and black.
She flies brightly across the sky,
increasing or decreasing in luminosity,
always to return again from one
of the two eggs, light and dun.
So the mysteries speak;
but always note where one is silent:
despite the awesome truths they reveal,
all is quiet on whatever happens
to the dark egg left behind in the ash.

If there is a bird of light,
we may propose a counterpoint:
as night follows day,
and the small light the large,
so the firebird has her opposite.
If she grows bright and then fades,
so the darkbird must start pale
and then enrich itself with deep shadows,
cool nights, quiet obscurity,
and the tenebrous potence of the unseen.
In the passage of time she consumes
herself, conceives herself like her sister,
the same two eggs for the twins each cycle,
for we always reproduce ourselves
and in so doing produce our complement.
Fire generates ash; ash preserves fire -
just as one banks the coals carefully
to keep the embers warm until morning,
so the firebird and the ashbird
keep and preserve each other together.
A light bird and a dark bird,
mother sister twin, self and weird,
flame and shadow, cognate and contradiction -
she grows so red she is blindingly white;
she grows so green she is impenetrably black.
So let us name the sister
of the flaming firebird, purple-red,
according to the inky green-blackness
if the firebird is the phoenix
then the ashbird is now the chloerix.
Tyrian purple and deepest forest green:
the royal red of monarchy heated
until it burns white with illumination,
vegetative chlorophyll absorbing all light,
so the deepest jungle is darkest night.
Neither bird belongs only to the sun,
contrary to popular belief:
these are moon birds, two faces,
the full and new aspects,
the facets of our most treasured gem.
Phoenix and chloerix, fire and ash,
the torches of Hecate who protects,
who gives us light in the night
when we most need it (to see)
and the safety of darkness (of not being seen).