O Wheel: Poems

Chapter One

THE TREE

This was a different sound, repeated from the other side pressed to the disappearing
    throat,
face, fingers, memory of.

The door blew wide on swells that shone back through the tree the ocean
    swung from—
single leaf.

Branch by branch you climbed to where the voices rained.

You held up the song, frayed to the whispered friction of grass when wind
    drops & the
meadow whistles under a dipping finch

the surf swept backward by a larger breath than you could draw till now.

Releasing everything, you climbed again among the others reaching through

to where the world, surprised by hearing pieces of its name, looks back
    into the crowd of
those still vanishing. Who called?

OFFERING

Intolerable

hands
untwisted only

to new
instruments

of sound
over the earth's

own mortar-pitted

brand caught
fleeing out of

chaos
funneled grit &

bonesmoke

climbing
north over the

cropped &
varnished
heads

night watchnight
wall dug

through each new
descendent

filing
the unfinished

iron chamber
music

sharpening.

CALLING

Woken by
the always less than

full-strength
angel

fists clenched
mouth still open

undergone

you had to look around

---

I swallowed I began to
swallow river-bank

stone root stump
graft of who lay back?

whose plough?

---

To separate the words: black furrow

ox axe spine
inconstant constant

gold streaks straggling fortune
sweet juice in your mouth
for what?—

just there
below the shag of

---

doublings where the blade

shears through each
further version

---

death each way

---

white scales
the high unsentencing

---

set free (his representing
power of another kind)

---

before the end
I cut the whole wings

from my heart.

THE TRIAL

Dark flame seeding
rimless

bolted

will & matter
indistinguishable

until they had
invented God

one God.

---

I felt it
in the warning

downward

leaf & branch
beneath

their fingers
rapid

murderous
(& there was music

—hacking)

(cities multiplied)

the defile
late cut deep into

the bone
abraded hand-

sewn through
surrendered

needle-grained

the wick &
spending

between worlds.

White boulders,
dry sea bed.

Absolved.

Or is it taken back

under the smoke?

ASK ME

Unlit
channel leaf

I cannot
whistles

everywhere against
the setting

hung to bleed

a thorn-like bow
string blur

sinks into
the throat

define it
red drop

feather

merchandise
unveiled

the flesh
once only

to be sold

this near edge
nothing mercy

flung all
face-of-hearing

lean stone
membrane

dug
who listen

swiftly kept
alongside

lifted
hope how it

would cling
against

necessity

it clings you
do as from

the cliff high
branches and

you will.

FACE

And yet there was
a face on
which the spirit

moved—one
breath drawn
out all-branching &

another following
depths—lit

spindles redividing
as
the voice cuts

forward through

salt silt the reeds (we
saw them sway-back

in our wake)—cut

pounded sliced
again—black mat of

memory.