interstice

to think ancient Egyptian worldview
is to sense true otherness…informed, I
think, by happenstance of a fertile river
flooding lifebloom across a desert plane

no wonder they plundered Nubian
mines for veins of gold to shine like
sun on desiccated bodies resin wrapped
and carried through interstice to a realm
of dark inundated chambers

for they could think dimension…inner
outer…space of four triangles set on a
square into the air where depth is afterlife
and length is life and height is aspiration

Bonnie Marshall

Plate: Great  Pyramid Diagram by Charles Piazzi Symthe, 1877

I shall transfigure…

I shall live…
where life is plane geometry….with
pyramids dimensional and
weighted…holy squared on
bedded rock…as desert reference
to orient my sanity
against a pale horizon.

I shall live…
where great Nile’s
summer floods force
papyrus gifts…impaled
to verticality through
thin siltiness…where
Egyptians draped in shadow
slice pomegranates…figs
with obsidian knives…and
stain incarnadine the
carving wood.

I shall transfigure…
to flensed bones
Ra bleached to whiteness…
burned in a marble crucible
to spare ash…collected…balance
weighed against a
feather.

Bonnie Marshall

The weighing of the heart of Hunefer by Anubis, before the Devourer Ammit: from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 19th Dynasty, c. 1285 B.C. (British Museum, via National Geographic)