looks up and the horse is gone. What transport
It offered, now absent.
So one returns to the page, studies what’s there.
The Creation of Adam
A lizard circled the marble lip of the wellhead.
In the wind, a shutter banged, disturbed the sparrow flock,
Which lifted like a sail, only to settle again on cobbles.
The other noon sounds? A horse turning a millstone.
Rust inching up a drainpipe. The spilling of sand
Down an anthill. The dog whimpering in a dream.
Bees shuttled between the hive and the garden.
On a cross of branches tied with baling wire,
An old man hung a ragged wool overcoat.
As he weeded, he instructed the scarecrow
On the doctrine and conundrum of free will.
When a crow landed on the scarecrow’s shoulder,
The scarecrow, who had listened well, knew
If he chose, he could shrug and shoo the crow.
If he chose. And could shrug. And could move his lips.
As of Yet
Call it paradise, this enclosure of trees.
No graves yet. No seasons. Time itself
As of yet uncreated. Nothing as of yet
Handmade. No stone knife. No bone needle.
No spear point. Call it paradise
Where a flint has yet to spark or deadfall
Flare beneath lightning, flare, then
Smother in a downpour, the char
Slick black beneath a first rainbow.
He has yet to learn to slaughter or tame the wolf,
To don the wolf-mask. As of yet, her body
Has not opened into birth, pain, and burden.
Beyond the enclosure of trees, a scattering
Of rocks they must still name and knap into tools:
Chert, agate, chalcedony, and for miles — Quick-quenched lava: obsidian.
Works and Days
At the fray of memory
A drop of sweat down her breast veers and misses her nipple
Chaos, it’s said, was born first
Riverside willow leaf turns, turns, caught in an eddy
Instant yet everlasting
Iron oxide, smeared ochres, charcoal gestures: flanks, tusks, hooves
Cuckoo song among the oaks
Orion at the horizon; linens freeze on a line
By noon shade evaporates
At the fray, at the fray of memory
Primitive Water
Cherry blossoms on the ink-stone —
Gutters, leaf-choked, overflow —
The path along the ridgeback washed out —
Seedlings, saplings, a poplar girded with wrist-thick vines —
If not for the gnarled, knuckley habit of words I might at last have a purchase on silence —
The deer freeze, skitter, then fly —
Snare of antlers —
The burden and effort of constructing meaning —
The quick bickering of jays —
The river seen from above as the character for dragon —
Five crows roost and shake down blossoms —
Myth, not history, predates one’s childhood —
There one can disinter the gibbous moon, the essential Arcanum, the primitive water’s source —
Models of Paradise
The mountain, all haze and mist,
Is without fixed form,
yet by mid-morning
It stands clear: an ax-trimmed jade fragment.
After the afterimage slips away,
One utters against
the utter silence
And time congeals again, as always, as matter.
The water tastes of lead, or rather the aftertaste of lead:
Honey of exile,
salt of lacrimae antiquae — One part per billion yet distinct.
Distracted, I looked around as others prayed.
Sinew fitted to bone.
Muscle to sinew.
The body’s dust is dust.
Ice, a cold weld, holds for now.
