To Limn a Limbed Thing
In this life, save the body
which is the fruit of many lives.
Espaliered pear: how heaviness
lavishes the twisted boughs with
sugary sustenance tamed taut
in gnarl and gold. You would hold this
autumn’s omen, press to chest a prayer:
that your life become bounteous, useful
as a gathering of pears dappled red.
Awaited, the gift of bindings, of trellised,
forced growth. Accustomed, the swept
azure. Why mourn sheltering shade?
God swoops like taloned rain.
God a bird in your branches.
Vows of heaven
I begin in happenstance. From whence come here and why, into arms that do not hold me, as sky in an egg births a bird and flees—I don’t remember my own flight. What blood, what heat seeking sameness. Nests untether moss by twig—lesser whitethroat, dark-eyed junco, linnet, twite—yet heaven finds itself half-hatchling here. I’d not be caught by desire’s wound wire, were it not my soul seeking its own death. Something closes, white wings over frail brood—a forgetting of night’s shut sky. It should be easy—grey partridge, quail, godwit, cuckoo—to renounce what lunacy craves.
I begin in happenstance. From whence come here and why, into arms that do not hold me, as sky in an egg births a bird and flees—I don’t remember my own flight…