Memory Keeping Priests

our feet lapped with midnight tide
fieldgrass stamens and pistils
the priests of this telescope temple
nightly thanking heaven
they were not born with our bloodied vessels
so poor and forgetful
we who trade for nothing,
for sleep,
a dozen shocks of raining light,
falling memory
last recipients of lightyears-lasting
prophecies without eyes to fit the lens
they keep the field
with wonder holy
never rising, kneeling,  praying, pressing
to the curtain the stalk of their bodies
likely and possible
they keep the censer burning, swinging
in case we remember
to come to the temple.

aug 17, 12

Words I Made Up

words i made up
for sound only
against a game my sister played
of words with sounds
that rotted in my throat
(they don't count
she said, unless you can find them
in the dictionary)
pushed through underbrush
untame
until the very wild of sound only
was my kingdom,  a void
that needed no fighting for
that swallowed the world,
meaning on meaning,
whole, or forgot it.

aug 16, 12

hanging scales

how fast it falls
and when you forget
altogether, tells me
slightly more than nothing
tells me you weigh our ends
scales strung up
from floating ribs, those scales
should be weighing
the next, now,
sometimes,
if my ears are
oiled and broken in
i hear -
almost, the key is not looking up
in the slant strain -
just how heavy our ends will be.

aug 20, 12

Your Joy

were you down that road
slipping by before dawn
the clouds
made a perfectly smooth scar
your joy, tether let
all the way out,
snuffling the seam
of road and field?

aug 17, 12