The Sun is Afire on My Brain, by Lee Stockdale

Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands) 1500

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The Sun is Afire on My Brain
 
The sun is afire on my brain
in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights,
I pray for a shower of cooling rain.
 
The sun has become a dog that’s trained
to leap the junkyard fence and bite,
the sun is afire on my brain.
 
Sun once sweetening country lanes
before the purple swan took flight,
I pray for a shower of cooling rain.
 
No baby Jesus asleep in the hay,
nor umbrellas of moons will help tonight,
the sun is afire on my brain.
 
Sun, be more than surrealist paint,
be, at least, soft candlelight,
I pray for a shower of cooling rain
 
for the flowers and all the world as we strain
to live and laugh and grow in your sight.
The sun is afire on my brain,
I pray for a shower of cooling rain.

Lee Stockdale

​Lee Stockdale has won the United Kingdom National Poetry Prize, Montana Prize for Humor, Sidney Lanier Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review International Merit Award, other awards, and is author of Bronxville (Finishing Line Press) and Gorilla (Main Street Rag). His mother was a poet, and his childhood home was filled with art; for Lee, ekphrastic poetry is like coming home. Lee serves as a North Carolina Poetry Society Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet and lives in the Western North Carolina Mountains with his wife, a potter and, like Lee also a veteran, where they practice hot yoga and feed the wild turkeys. leestockdale.com