Sharing this poem which will appear in my forthcoming collection Gods of Water and Air. I'm not entirely sure from which publisher it will be forthcoming, as I've had some publishing mishaps you can read about earlier in this blog. But it will forthcome. Here's a poem that originally appeared in Pilgrimage:
Anvil of Light
In a forgotten valley
studded with runic oaks,
at mid-August, on an anvil of light
my breath and two swallows rise and fall.
Nearing to the remembered
place,
a wail of distant insects
riffles the distance like notes in a weird scale.
Solitude comes to an intersection
And a figure-eight of
melody
startles up out of the grass.
Involuntary,
this godward thing called praise.
It lights on a weed tip
and its wings radiate out.
The wind’s tides roll
through dry weeds, on and on,
a Greek chorus of Why,
Why, Why.
A
mockingbird's tail flicks.
The silent ring of the lupine bells.
Still, I don’t know where
I am
until I watch a pencil-tick
crawl
up a poppy's thigh
and
black-spotted wings sprout
from my back. I flap away
to a dry height from which I can see
the question’s shape. Here
is really nowhere. Are you nowhere too?
How can anyone ever trap
matter in words?
Or
ever make ideas as apple-fine as this air?
