Mark Mansfield is the author of four, full-length collections of poetry, most recently Tales from the Wingèd Chariot Inn (Chester River Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Abridged, Anthropocene, Dreich, Fire, The High Window, London Grip, Magma, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Sarasvati, Skylight 47, Stand, StepAway, and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins and is a retired musician. Currently, he lives in upstate New York.
Epipsyche
Seeing is misbelieving.
—Anthony Hecht
Who is she that still a few nearsighted
young scops (and one wool gatherer with robust ears
like mine) follow her, braying like asses
or wheezing calliopes while she just stares,
pantomiming one ancient cosmic lay, a dreamer
laid down by Pythagoras and Thee Spheres?
Here, hypnotized by how she channels all that gleams,
shapes shifted to star-struck wings—each haunts the glares
of porch and verandah bulbs, neon, streetlights,
strands like pearls on bridges and overpasses,
quaint paper lanterns, garden torches, or high beams—
then quicker than fins, flashing from the bottomless deep,
ignites.
© Mark Mansfield