first person
draw the empty frames
from their hope chest
(the folded gray uniform
long gone to dust)
wreathed in ash
I fletch the sky’s reed-sister
as if all human
wrongs were never-
helmsmen, never-priests
on Mount Monadnock
I tested the berries
(sweet in summer: True)
against flesh’s flame
the body’s silver specie
a music in my mind
ghost-music, -specie
can’t be your mirror, I
cheats death again
the root & its entourage
ark-in-the-forest,
zither- lit & -strung
don your ghost-uniform
muster me in cyme-
light, marrow-light,
unbide my tender service
untitled (specimen dowry)
Pearl pearl be my docent—
the green wedge
attests—&, the singing cleat—
I have many secret debts—
The human body is a system—
the dream sweeps
through, & puts music away—
my life in the great courts
*
to address the least durable moment—
trace-protection
a mythos conferred, heavy gender
weighting the forest’s punctum—
faith’s
same four notes in the understory—
manna
shelter-vessel, the medulla’s gray star
the copper pit in which I face you
shifts aside, lobed with the literal—
extraction’s logic: adduce vs adjourn
—my tasting-garment, fragrant hyphae
stoop to murmur in flood of thee