IN THE LOOP OF THE GRAYNESS WHEEL – a meditation
being of the earth, one part of valor
is to stay close to the heart of things
on the flip side of a scarred wall perhaps
but with a compulsive kind of ease;
a winnow of bird wings strew
grainy motes in predawn stealth
impel a momentum in the
serried loop of the grayness wheel
earth is on its aphoristic path and
I wait for the breeze to bell a voice
but it is only the unrelenting shorn leaf
the blown-away word that it brings;
my inheritance is this skin sac
and in it the mind’s graven light
with its stele of wounded rules
a subtle amplitude of being;
the avowal is that others
humble in pain, dole out seed
thresh, store, leaven bread
sweep out the rancid street
soften the river into my jug
allocate tax, dip into sleepless snarls
guide pressure pegs to dewy points
in unmapped meadow
so I may gather nebulous chips
in my tray and play easy,
indebted yet free;
I must have fancied it all
this need to path a usage
of flesh, this tonal hub
in the zoetrope’s vermeil riffle
notching a winsome trail
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a dream dove could revel in,
cresting arias
exploring split-rhythms
epiphany of runes,
to woo living bark fizzy with sap
in a maze of wonder where
every element has a shadow to walk in
every stir of lore a name;
but mere sap is not enough, it must
rise luminous with love, expend
reclaim, nest a newness, there being
no other way to sculpt this miracle, this life–
like a fire-anointed moth
I must have numbed a guise
of flame, to cull a flute of words
in impetuous chase,
settled for a let-live anarchy
the sorrowing dust of homesteads
earth-tones transient as
herons combing the dying light,
to drown in a rare mizzle, a broken sun
in every drop, where silence
like a fawn, arches its velvet neck
toward a fragrance of bluebells,
to read the story of the drudging million, rapport
a mind-space, a thirst longing to assuage
always ahead of the next heartbeat
with the efficacy of a prayer-wheel,
to poise an ankh on a megalith’s blazing core
for oracles to exult, wellsprings to cluster
with racemes of primal ore, the bezel glow
of a dulcet chime, another oscillation
one more phenomenal trajectory
and the grayness wheel will toss
my tesserae whole again, then again, then again.