Seeing Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks

'A bird is an instrument working according to a mathematical law.'

Illumination in the gloom, little more than
the moon's lustre. I mirror read tight tendrils
of spider writing to the future mind
of genius.

Spirals of harmonic flight, perpetual motion,
equal angles, the confluence of double helix,
percussion and the eddying of tides were stuffed
in his cerebellum.

One intellect to conjure earth's flesh, human bone,
the sun's skin, to transfuse the quill and spill it
onto parchment, black ink flowing in reverse
of synapse.

Unravelled skein of inspiration, mesmeric
lilliputian script, sketched prettier than Belgian lace.
A cosmos joust, to charge and lance conundrums,
grey matter bearing down, giving birth
to concepts.

I wander glass crypt to crypt, intermittent pulse
of light to glimpse the theories of his age
as artist, scientist, engineer. Breathe in museum hush
and gloom and feel our limitations nothing more
than alchemy.

Renaissance god, his bird mind soaring higher
than Icarus, preening mathematical law, submariner
in contraptions, reflex cogs and springs. This dynamo
siring movement, space, weight, force, as wheels turn
keeping time.

And in the shadows, hooks and pulleys crane
my mind's wilderness, desert to this fertile genius
too much for one skull. His magic, marching
in battalions, black pygmy letters in formation
shoulder pressed to shoulder, in the darkness
inventing light.

© Sheryl Persson