This poem depicts a sequence of becomings, as if to tapestry.
Bright wings, momentarily concrete,
flicker in the turning, concentrated
within the branches’ fever. There is no grace
but this, traced in negative: wind’s imprint
and world’s reply. One trunk’s cry:
the broken promises made
to all which strains, becoming
towards light’s cradle.
Live hands, live sinews,
a bird skull scrawling its name
– calcified reason, stripped of the callings
of feather and flesh. And we are what is left:
pulse of symmetry, caught
between lichen’s bleached quarantine
and ocean’s answer. I feel the magnetism
of my loaned sea-metals, whole-sick,
but I must defend the narrowness
of this cave’s nerve tissue. Cohering
here, against the beating root-worm woven
and the premature harmony of siren strings
quivering, I huddle by green embers:
afterglow of blood-spark’s attempt,
for, by degrees, I am.
Squidditas 