winter is a
sly fox
running over
masks of
ice fields
summoning
rough-spirit
winds and
bandwidths
chlorophyll cooling
within moon
struck sticks
and far below the
countervailing
gravity
a hairless human
ice fishing for
obsolescence
in argillaceous
spaces
these hushed
moments of
under-water wonder
are for the collecting
each
tiny
point
of light
rush-weaving,
wish-harnessing
the long truing line of star-currents
and all
that
lies
beyond
my dichotomy
lies
in the floor
beam
exactly half
of me
is
loving;
the other half
is fletching
an hour-arrow
by moon light
for the
fetching
right in my own town
right in the very same
village where my own
daughter was playing
last night, saying,
‘mom, stop worrying
so much; this is a safe
neighborhood!’
right where she ran with the other girls,
her hair trailing behind her like a mare,
her heart wild-singing under a full fall moon
right at the almost-age of young woman
it is a heart-gut-soul-wrenching terror
to have a child in this world
in this place where every thing
you think you know is pulled out
from under you
from inside of you
under a heart beat
it makes you want to hide
and keep your children inside
forever
for you know this is not the
first or last time; for you know
you cannot fight this kind of evil
but what kind of life is that?
love out-endures in the long end,
and perhaps faith carries it there;
but where do hope and joy
go in that monstrous moment?
joy is gone in a flash — with the girl
hope must be kept alive at the bedside;
otherwise, how do you ever get up again?
how do you ever close your eyes to sleep?
how do you ever trust to dream?
UPDATE: Fiona returned home safely the following morning. No further details provided (or needed). Thank God!
the talking wires
shadow me on
my tiny-totem
trajectory
the half dozen geese
hail the october sky
as they sail into her
wide, waiting eye
the writer spider
evolves her steel
city delicacy under
the front-porch eaves
as the body of knowledge
creeps in through the
thinking crack in
the winter-wall
and all in the
span of a wink
some people never open
their windows; they don’t
even know the light in their
own house: on a hill, up a wish,
down a well, over the bows
and arrows of this slant-death
that comes too quickly
and without discovery.
they don’t know the planes of
their own ocean floors, the jig-
saw spread and tongue-in-groove
lilt of sloping wood where you can
lie flat for hours and breathe
deeply for the first time in your
life: buried briefly far and away
from the shiny hammer of terror.
if you never attend to your
fear—to the full tilt and lift of the
continent sheets; the vast forms of ice:
the spite—you can never attend to your love.
when, in the course of four
mountains, one encounters the
four winds, and the four directions
by which they came;
when the buck meets you on the
borderland and says: we are one
in the same; when the eye of the
cliff excoriates your four-score soul;
when you descend from the perfect-union
heights and wend your way down, down
into the well of stars to find the cell-singing
mountain bending beneath your feet;
when, in the course of four
sky-strings, you let go and
fling yourself off this earth
engine; and open every door.
