exilic topos

the pollen’s spark hidden in the air’s tongue

anterior to the presence that commands begin

in outline, an absence disappearing into voice

shadow-grid, concealed but not unobtainable

Tye River

(1)

light frost, its cincture

the fragrant invisible
at large
among the wheatfolds
a lucid finitude:
golden seals
the weather breaks

(2)

in priory, a held motion
succors
debt’s visible passage

shoaled with all
the organs of mourning

(3)

pity the dull orchard
its sleep-vestry
propped against Art

the mending-flame
or macular escarpment
pronouncing

the hawk’s ablative

(4)

enlaced with hoarfrost
the zodiac glides
to your filament-feet

or, suffer a firmament—

(5)

steady the lamp, friend
steady
the lengthening shadow

metric for flame

Northumberland

living memory of the ash-tree
groping, lending itself
to the gaze’s syllable-descant,

its instant, flung (as if away)

*

winter’s surface, its republic—

audible lamp reconnoitering

nucleus of means

the quince at dusk
expressing
its hitherto, its after—

its brief for change

(say it keeps a diary,
a voice
it supersedes)

dwelling beneath
the acknowledgment
of the staved
work, to which
the “truth of things”
condescends—

declines its own
belief in shadows—

nucleus of means
“the work”
(i.e. the vocation)

harvest
of the quince’s
bitter fruit, reversal

paring the terms
from mock solitude—

that wager
of, it would seem,
affirmation—

(or of its shadow)—