As your eyes were broken
and broken into, light of light
leaving out repealing columns,
humping and mirthful shadow,
the laughing tradition meant this.
This noble togetherness of walls
blue in their suspended falling
but don’t ask us about our calling
the time set yet sure, set aside
like a brochure of rivers stalling.
The great honor about floodtides
has flung back our repeated track
into the wide heel of numb zero
although we were pickled humble,
cracking breath in mausoleums.
Opening upon foreshadowed stalls,
Oregon’s bronze mountains, stressed
and dappled by night blue leaves flit
with inviolate red, so the figures spiced
gesture from spots reclining, declining.
As the woodpecker is fleet and noble,
The eyes of the river flow westward.
Time-and-shadow axe humble wood.
We too are a parish of piebald shadows.
The shady calling that comes. Crumbles.
FEBRURARY 2007