from Blackwater Quartet, selection 12

pH
 
Blue on blue, the damsel skims its own reflection,
braking one-eighty then away.
The weather silts this heraldry, beyond the reeds, rain’s
faint applause, cloud banks, autumn’s racked abacus,
cloud enough to make a heaven, but not here.

Gods cast no shadows, liquid equations pumping starlight
through cold space, some seedy
incandescence.

The heart is a stone. You know its round brightness, cut
to ring sets and worked gold
and the Kathmandu road to the snow fields, the white
white field that made this stone a fire in it turning.

Oily lamp smoke blackens red herds, spear-shaker sketch 2D
forty thousand years to tell you this kept fire is yours.
You and I once touching, ending white ages hence, years from
that first year of everything.

The garden is a constant thing,
bolting reds, the stamen’s yellow carousel, June
peaking to the slip of autumn,
maplewashed hours’ sumptuous decay
cropped for store and then the mission to awake, root pulse,
the air’s quickening
and sky too blue to breathe.

Amoretti tumble leafshaped, incised umbers, soundless except
memory’s stubborn gold, these words
dry in the mouth.