of her silent orison,
then sink with her till she rises, lulled with the krill.
Beads of salt spray stop me, like metal crying.
Her cupped face breathes its spouts, like a jewel-wet prong.
In a cormorant’s barnacle path, I trail her, spun
down through my life in the making of her difference,
fixing my mouth, with the offerings of silence,
on her dark whale-road where all green partings run,
where ocean’s hidden bodies twist fathoms around her,
making her green-fed hunger grow fertile as water.
PARAVALEDELLENTINE: A PARADELLE
For Glen
Come to me with your warning sounds of the tender seas.
Come to me with your warning sounds of the tender seas.
Move me the way the seas’ warm sea will spend me.
Move me the way the seas’ warm sea will; spend me.
Move your sea-warm come to me; will with me; spend
tender sounds, warning me the way of the seas, the seas.
Tongues sharp as two wind-whipped trees will question.
Tongues sharp as two wind-whipped trees will question.
(Skin or nerve waiting and heart will answer.
Skin or nerve waiting and heart will answer).
Question will answer two tongues and, or will:
heart sharp as nerve trees; waiting, skin-whipped wind.
Brim your simple hand over where the skin is.
Brim your simple hand over where the skin is.
Wish again, whenever hair and breath come closer.
Wish again, whenever hair and breath come closer.
Closer, again, whenever; brim where your skin is;
hair, wish and breath over the simple hand, come.
Spend come warning me, whenever simple sounds will, will;
move your question. Answer your heart-sharp tender
sea-warm will with me. Way of the seas, the seas!
Where skin-whipped nerve trees wind over waiting tongues,
brim closer to me. Again the skin, as wish,
and two of the breath, hand and hair, or come, is.
WILD YEASTS
For Marta
Rumbling a way up my dough’s heavy throat to its head,
seeping the trailed, airborne daughters down into the core,
bubbles go rioting through my long-kneaded new bread;
softly, now, breath of the wildest yeast starts to roar.
My hands work that peaked foam, push insides out into the light,
edge shining new sinews back under the generous arch
that time’s final sigh will conclude. (Dry time will stretch tight
whistling stops of quick heat through my long-darkened starch.)
How could I send quiet through this resonant, strange, vaulting roof
murmuring, sounding with spores and the long-simple air,
and the bright free road moving? I sing as I terrace a loaf
out of the hands it has filled like a long-answered prayer.
Now the worshipping savage cathedral our mouths make will lace
death and its food, in the moment that refracts this place.
EARTH GODDESS AND SKY GOD
You haven’t formed me. I’m a monster still.
Then give me your body. Give it to me in rain.
Look up and fill me. I am too dark to stain.
You haven’t held me. I hold apart my will
Spread dryness through me. I have a night to fill
in high heat-speckled waves, apart from where
I will come down. I have nothing to share
with breath. I will give it back. There is one to kill,
one to renew, and one to persuade to weep.
My night holds everything except for sleep.
CONVERSATION
Edward Weston’s “Squash,” 1936
“Delve for me, delve down, delve past your body, crowned
by its hidden stem, like a shadowy alarm;
see how you vanish past our dark-shed charm,
throat over throat, ankle to ankle, bound
in our different arches, summer-nicked and browned
interlocking rings in the chain of wrist and arm.”
“Lie for me, lie. I want to feel you turn.
Mark out the summer’s bending month and learn
to cradle the concrete ground till it softens. Stay.
Measure me past my stem. Though your shadows churn,
close yourself over. Encompass me like clay.”
CALENDARS
A poem in chants for four voices:
Demeter
Chorus
Persephone
