Two Poems
Papyrus
The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of
the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
Isaiah 19:7
The paper reeds
I lash together
make a skiff of papyrus.
This delivers me
to the lotus delta.
I navigate liminal
thickets. Beyond me,
the river’s blue mouth
empties into salt.
By the brooks
of Babylon, we
wept. We wept for reeds
cut down and
roots destroyed.
No stalk for
a measure,
no stylus to write.
By the mouth
which circles into O,
a child fell into the nest
of a bluethroat.
Above her, ten thousand
strident storks.
Hidden in brambles,
the last painted frog.
Of the brooks
I sing. Of Ein Tamir spring,
of brisk springs and calcite footpaths,
of her buckthorns and terebinths,
red blooms of brief cud-weed
—Her pale shoshanna flower,
As a lily among the thorns.
Shall wither
What shall wither
in the long drought?
Pith for paper
pith for the beggar’s feast,
the embalmer’s wrap.
The funeral barge pith,
so too the ferryman.
Be driven away
Who will be
driven into dust?
Fallow deer,
fire salamander,
the tender barbus,
the dark-winged groundling?
As the wetlands languish
so the bulrush will
perish
And be no more.
Winnowing
Meditations on A.R. Ammons
Honor the perched
red finch
spilling sunflower seeds
down to wenge reaches
of renewal
**************
Coffee steaming the cool air
Reading Ammons on the porch
Gusts fan lithe pages—
Poems levitate above every
doxology
*****************
This Rich Black Country/
Terrain/ The Constant/
Saliences/Raft/Loss*
******************
So I waited
until the sun went
behind a nimbus
of words
Until unliteral
I threaded together
constellations
************
It needs to be enough—
to sit in the face of a stiff wind
to lose myself in a glut of color
and the baptismal liquidity
of the loud runnel
that has
no name
**************
Day after day
the finches squander
black seeds
Deep in slumber, I gather these gleanings
thrash them through woven-reeds
of a weathered winnowing-fan
