BLACK AND WHITE

The Bat Call

(painting by r.margetts)


BLACK AND WHITE

Apollyon and the Sustainer—
twin murmurs in the same abyss—
once burned as one bright syllable
before the fracture,
before the hiss.

From fallen star to hollowed ditch,
from angel’s crown to scavenger’s snitch,
a god once feathered learned to crawl,
and in the mud remembered all.

From wolf to dog the lineage bent,
from fang to altar, sacrament.
A deity stirred in feral breath,
half born of love, half kin to death.

Gabriel lifted the blackened flame,
Michael the white of stainless name;
they crossed the Styx in mirrored light,
two edges of eternal night.

Did He who fashioned dawn from clay
scatter petals in the day
and clasp bright Lucifer as friend,
before the arch of heaven bent?

Did he who sang creation’s chord,
cast down by wrath of jealous Lord,
rewolf the earth with howling breath
and crown the soil with seeds of death?

From heaven’s vault did bile descend,
a bitter rain that would not mend?
Did sentinels of lunar keep
crawl through blossoms while mortals sleep?

From broken loam the fig tree grew,
its purple heart split clean in two—
to feed the blind with sugared sight
so they might wander through the night.

From wolfish blood did shadow spill,
teaching trembling hands to kill;
and those once blind, now shown the flame,
shrunk from light and cursed its name.

The serpent coiled in Sabbath’s glow,
in Eden’s ash and afterglow;
it licked the spoils of day seven’s rest
and crowned the dusk within its breast.

Black and White—
not war, but seam.
Not foe, but fractured dream.

For on this equinox of breath
life leans equally toward death;
the scales suspend, the heavens wait—
no side triumphant over fate.

Light births shadow,
shadow births flame;
each calls the other
by secret name.

And somewhere between
the fang and the dove,
the curse and the hymn,
the wrath and the love—

the Maker watches
without decree,
as night and dawn
share custody.

Black and White—
the balance sways.
The equinox
is today.