Shell

Shell

Originally uploaded by entheos

Marbles

Marbles

Originally uploaded by entheos

at the window,
the smell of rain
stays on
like the lingering
snap of silence
after the air held
a sharp cry

the fledgling’s tossed out of the nest,
the rain flung from the cloud,
the heart tipped from childhood.

the first lash of knowledge
is an infant’s cry of hurting:
why are you so far away?

the last cut’s left stinging
on the deep threshold of humankind:
here i am

shake off the night, forget it;
it wants you to remember God,
all of them, named in rolling thunder.

it writes the Name across the sky, again
and again, patient as a mother and father,
teaching the seventy-two beats of life
to the youngest child.

bitter was the road behind us,
all our love was for the stretching bed
of the way to come.

yet-
one day it comes back,
with a gentle tap on the shoulder.

“I’ve not left you,
I’ve been busy
cutting out the road ahead.”

we take our hands out of fists,
leave the rocks piled up into mountains,
throw down the heavy carts-

step a little sideways. see?
a circle coming and going
with ourselves as the prize.

o, speak-
the tongue and the bridle are thunder,
the gift of the flame without a hearth
and between them, the racing lightning
sparks tinder to the heart and burns out the mind.
speak! hold forth, take no silence
except the moment after breath
and before striking the strings of your throat.

after you speak, the air will rock too heavy
- full of hearing.

clasped from mask to mask,
travelling between the curtains-
the step over the threshold,
guise in one hand, soul in the other,
is space for a knife, and
cold besides.

sullenly, sullenly rumble, lash
whipping at the dirt; a chained animal,
a broken one, kicking the ground
in the last dregs of hurt.
the first thunder, the first locust-and-hail,
the first knowledge
of standing after pain.

somewhere else, in
the back of a brain
we graze a grey shore,
gentle rain blurring
the bite of detail. the water
bends under despair,
passes away.