sylvain

a forest
sets no boundaries
but embroiders an expanding hem
pattern senses and their silences more
woven than you have ever lived
you will learn by heart

by heart you will be led
venture braided root and rock
fed on river and lichen bark
belong so wholly there
one day you find
no heart but honeycombed shade and light

cat

i saw a cat today
suffer
crushed wet
eyes bled
her teeth, tiny furies opening
again again

sound sound sound

saw her woman lean
collarbones wet
her mouth a quiet wound

i hoped they had traded
dying in one another
what other prayer can hear
that sound

ozymandia

love her for her many
thousands
dogs, roses, daffodils,
ozymandias
chimes, hearses, chestnuts
hardening
guns, ailments, inches
pale and heavy hair

rowland

the man with a last name like another country
a smoking jacket in summer
says things i want to hear
"it's been like that for everyone"
but nothing is clear
he walks out
as stranger as
he walked in.

was sky

was sky
if i can run an arm along it
push a boat across it
to the bank of stars
eat of it
dream then wake to it
light and dark it is, it is

cast

spokes of growing old
grow
a mountain crumble
a still center
cast shadow
cast light
cast of itself in the sky

by spirit, by fire

this fire
so ready to be us
not only licks kindling clean
but sends bouquets to our snouts
across rocks, strokes our faces
lifts our skin, something
to remember me by,
once we've shed this baptism

clocks

supposedly morning by low
angled light
but the bell struck until i
lost
cottonwood spores
swirled into beards
for old webs
brained bouquets
dandelion clocks
beside a field of kin
still lit root to fuse
counting ribs of river current
that bell rung

caught god

wings spread on web
heart fast
a single copper string
struck once for all
reverberate time
through air
through webbed marrow
thousand needles in your eye
just once i would
see you caught
what mouths
would come for your heart
fast

orb spider

how does a spider begin -
i am never up or still enough -
beg in the morning -
tell me -
she does not stand to be watched -
who could watch better -
or begged -
those who have time to beg
should be occupied -
she packs up her mansion of bridges -
covers herself with the invisible strands -
something to munch until dark

maze

it goes okay
i go okay
come loosened
body more like body
than snarled rope
space to hold
weight held
not this line
tracing itself
into maze

bell

mountains go and go and go

present on and on and on

surely one must have

rung the bell of them before

so echo they rhyme

against and against

my open mouth

sleeping brute

in the hallway
outside the dorm of the sleeping brute

my own bright hurt
rises in my ears
and his

blue rainbows

my feet have nightmares
beaten senseless
removed on account of infection
pretended out of existence

would i not
trust waking consequences
if not also their dark left
hands hired in dream

blue rainbows
lean on you
i will even
where you will
and ache i will

stone pockets

paper shirt
limp surrender
the winded river takes
no prisoner

baptize the shirt
from skin
until bright as clay
vermilion clean

screw nothing down
pockets with stone
pulse with throat
fingers with rings

leave nails
for digging

lymph

body fed on fever
bed on body
while thumb sized hearts
spaced through swell
and whiten
seize

without them nothing
reaches
fingers and feet drain
wax without wicks

must we sing

for spring you must

bow and twist

lure salty vesper

with swung hips

but now how long

since snow

locked over days

people explain glaciers

to other, incredulous, people

for winter what

must we sing