drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
October 21, 2010
Staring out into the ocean
And dazzled by the sun,
She could hardly believe her eyes
Was that the ship of Isis?
Isis,
The mother of Horus,
The wife of Osaris,
The protector of the dead.
What was she seeking now?
Ship of Isis, October 21, 2010
drawings by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
October 9, 2010
The youngest
Of all the Mirror Holders
Imagines herself
In the midst of seven luminous stars
With the shadowy figure
Of
Isis at her side.
Isis tells the Young Mirror Holder
Of the treachery of Seth,
Of the death of Osaris
And of his lost coffin,
That she finally found
Embedded
In the trunk of a cedar tree.
Of her search again
For the scattered fragments of Osaris’s body,
And of his final resurrection
So that he may live forever in Hades.
The Young Mirror Holder
Listens to Isis,
Trying to imagine all this,
But it is impossible.
Seven Sisters Green Pleiades, October 9, 2010
Isis’ Redeeming Shadow over the Thirsty Earth, October 6, 2010
drawings by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
October 8, 2010
Two Mirror Holders,
Friends from childhood,
Imagine themselves
Standing
With Daedalus and Icarus
Listening to the tale
Of their escape from Crete,
Born aloft on the wax wings
that Daedalus had fashioned
For himself and his son.
Standing together
On the Portal of Despair
The two Mirror Holders
Turn to Daedalus
Eager to hear the end of his tale.
But Daedalus can only weep
As he remembers,
As if it were today,
Seeing his son fly too close to the sun,
Watching the wax wings melt,
And seeing Icarus
Fall headlong into the ocean.
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
October 4, 2010
Another Mirror Holder
Imagined
That she was Persephone
Mapping Hades, the Underworld,
So that she might
—for a few months each year—
Escape from it.
She followed the path of the river Acheron
Back to earth
And then
Looked up at Sirius
—the brightest star
in the night sky—
For further guidance.
Sirius Rising,
drawings by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
October 3, 2010
for Catherine de Zegher
In the Glass Library of Time
There were Mirror Holders
Who searched for the past
Rather than the future.
One imagined
That he was Poseidon
Sending nightly messages from lighthouse to lighthouse
To help those who wanted to navigate his oceans.
May 23, 2010
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
It was all that she had preserved from her childhood
This book
Made by her Irish uncle
About a family
Of small insects
Who lived in a miniature castle
Balanced on the branch of a tree.
May 25, 2010
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
She turned the book’s next page,
already knowing what it would show
–a castle
That housed the laboratory
Of the Alchemist.
May 26, 2010
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
For a moment,
She closed the book
And stared out at the ocean,
Looking at the setting sun through
The fragment of tear-stained, brown glass
That she always carried in her purse.
May 27, 2010
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
The she turned
The next page,
And
Watched, enchanted,
A butterfly
Speeding away from the columned portal.
Forgotten lines of W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet,
About his Tower with its winding stairway and windows,
–learned when she was a child in Dublin–
Sprung into her head:
“Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies . . .
May 28, 2010
drawing by Slobodan Dan Paich and text by Moira Roth
For hours she slowly turned the pages,
Back and forth,
Accompanied by memories of reading it as a child
Blended with memories of her uncle
–his strong Irish accent, his infectious laugh, his endless tale-telling.
Finally she turned to the last page,
–seemingly far away from the image of the first one
with its miniature castle precarious balanced on a branch–
To see a sinking jagged iceberg
But perhaps it was only
That the stone and wood had turned to ice
Which was now melting away?
