Consonance V

the question of the matter of

what we prevent ourselves from

            the matter of from

the rusted iron gate of from

what history welds with corrosion

                        the stuck thing inside

                        deliberately made

                        encouraged to disease

lean and answer the question god dammit

show me the limits of the city

where inside and outside draw

their invisible threshold

                                    tell me

did the gate open out or swing

in

where is the child with the bronze key

sewn into his breast pocket

                                                under what

lake is he standing with eyes bulging

            his fish hand at his side           reaching

prepared to give to you

                                                it

if you ask

not question or answer                                                it

then,

Print

to the road return breathe

over the bloody footprint and return

to the black ribbon edge

northeast home

often movement          this way

you the traveler become the bloody print

that you were here and left a living sign

what made the wolf paw bleed though

is what brought you here to the mystery

and what calls you away          the ricochet

the ocean singing in the bare trees

singing the losses that register as human

and what comes after                          becomes

becomes)

the moment that made the paw print

and the moment it imprinted in you

tying off the moments in between

                                    now becomes then

in the wet stillness of your breathing

kneeling over   and under        the stain

inhale

                                                            stain

become

breathe                                    return

face the child standing in the snow staring

at the child in you staring back.

Consonance IV

                                                I the

                                                body

singing

Modoc say:      I

                        the song

                        I walk here

            a prayer sung for

            the body of the

            people

I                       the song                       I walk here                  in the body

I                       the body                      walk in song                 within

the body is the song

place sings the body

I soon will travel

for the sake of

transport         to make

                        money

and to sing

else  where                  not

                                                                                    here

I will drive three

days back to

familiar skies                                       singing home and not the body no

Black Ribbon Edge

how the hole inside grows                   and the road

                                                the road unspools fills

feeds inertia to inertia

as a river feeds water

into lake

            how a sunset

in Arkansas sits four hours

in your blurred mirrors                                               dying

                                                            over Texas

                                                            I think to myself

reflect later that the evening sky

is a lady

painting herself for a night out

with

but the image is a dead end                all

                                                            images

but a few

                                               

kaleidoscopic

                                                            dead ends

in the stellar vacuum

of intentional speech

                        the song I am become

sings to turn on you now glittering assumptions of flesh

as soil

            and all that the sky makes of our eyes.

Eleven

            the finger

of a candle

you point up

            slight number

                        point to

the awareness

of the heart

not to a con-

ceptual god

but to the mystery

                        you

slight number

                        stalks

with no flower

heads

            remind me

of the work

I have here

remind me

of the dead

here also.

Consonance III

not now            but wasn’t there then

a store at that end of town where one

could find scottish thread and egyptian

needles

where one could shout             hooray for love

                                                            hooray

as if balloons bright primary colors

might float up inside the swelling self

            the savage mystery of it all

                        that many make religion

                                    out of

or worse

            that sadness makes its music of

the alone                     the alone that live in memory

for no sake but survival’s churning muddy sake

                        the tears and anger that incinerate

us from the inside out

                                                            alone

as the oyster must be

                                    as the single shattering drop

of rain must be

                        there               there at the edge

                                    of sadness        of a town

that forgets where it once ended at the edges

of cornfields and quarries                   this town

that swallows itself daily as Saturn did his sons

as the mantis does her inseminator who is never

privileged as mate or lover

listen to the music of these clustered ruins    hear

valves slam shut in the dying human machine

Consonance II

                        is a matter of

                        what we prevent

                        ourselves from

                                    knowing

a legend is a made thing                      a thing

made out of circumstance

that a story cannot carry

            in its making

            it is made

            & to say what

                        it is

which is to say that the making of a legend

                                    the making is retained

                                    by the made thing

that the legend tells the story of its creation

                                    how it came to be

                                    what it came to

that this man

            an oak tree of a man with an infinite mind

spilled into violence so to be seen as not short tempered

as virtuous      instead

and by extension

                                    unedited          ineradicable

and so towers the legend over his poems        the thinking

swaying and unquestionable

                                                every move every physical

every intellectual & musical move like a bear emerged

and drunk from her cave returned to creation creation

itself.

Remi Rebillard

in the photograph        salt water is silver

a young woman is bent over up to her knees

and elbows

she is rising from the water                she is

soft lead          rising out of sun-veined silver water

she will soon

stand to face us

a ragged hat                covers

most of what    has not yet

risen    from the water

a liquid necklace dangles from behind the curled brim

a twisting strand of ocean caught by the camera

swaying in the view between her narrow thighs

it

pours from her likely translucent                   elastic

milky throat

a spiraling funnel of rain

                        from a leaden girl rising to cloud.






http://www.thequietfront.com/storage/qf-201-250/qf-233/Remi_Rebillard-07.jpeg

Laces

1

a white dress floats

in the dark mooncut

river                a thin

winter breeze

rustles the hillside

of dry oak leaves

moon-dressed wings

of an owl flare

as they wince through the veil

from another molten realm

2

perched in the crotch

of a massive sycamore

is this eye buffeted

by the breathing river

this obsidian eye traces

the silent migrations

of clouds

the cloud-like dress

3

on damp mornings

as the mist and this eye melt

into the threaded mineral dream

this staggered row

of sycamores               stands

like the wrinkled legs

of a mythic white mastodon

briefly

occasionally     it appears

the massive head shrouded

and blind.

Consonance

the consonance of rain that calms

a convulsive river                                like how

a warm hand settles shuddering grief

                                    a form of translation

the borrowed light of the moon

gives it its lost look

its one stone face

                                    eyeless             sober

                        fluttering over us tonight

helicopters shuttle between the collapsed flow

of the highway and the hospital

            their insipid music drowns the barking

of a red fox dying hidden in the cornfield

                                    in the periodic silences

I hear the plea weaken and cease.

Wingless

it is raining and the soot

thickens where it does not flow

charred and clotted wings

dislocate from my blistered back

wingless           I am rooted

                        vulnerable

by daybreak I will be found

and then recognized

but should the rain lengthen the night

or if a cave open into another dream

something to come next as

the way back has been lost.

Confinement

we are confined by our bodies and if

the mystics are correct

                        that the body is in

                                    the soul

            then what

when I say I want to touch you I mean

I want to reach inside you to where you are

what you are                            I mean

I want to escape myself

                        to shudder and scream

the agony of the earth that we call gravity

shudder and scream like mothers

who have lost sons to war        to oceans

                                    to the mystery

                        to love even

I want to touch you     to reach inside myself

to touch that quivering human confined

            in this sorrowful animal body.

The Drought Continues

“Our dead fathers came down to us in the river”
                -Norman Dubie


engineers dredge commercial rivers     frantically build
a check-valve wall in the Mississippi gone drippy-drippy
back-flowing with oom-pah saline into the great carotid
exclamation point            the Orleans dot
oom-pah-pah funeral procession pah-pah dumped
into the river unevenly dividing

                       AH-MEHRH-IC-AHHH

                                     god sheds grace (dirty dog)
& Jesus Saves (with coupons)


              [sound of light murmurs discordantly, stage left]


I hear figures on the radio        data converted
into cost    “transubstantiation, baby” according to
Marty

but that white communion wafer is still a clever disguise
for dirt        a symbol of the conversion to clean
edible and in context ohhhhh, so sexy, baby, oh, baby doll,
pull my cord

let the hookworms in            cure this asthma
get on board    all aboard    all is one / connected
the balance and the balance sum    the cross
and the crossroads

the dryassed devil and the deep blue sea, baby.

Reply to Mary

it is no wonder really

how these things are made

by stringing or stacking

old words

punctures

            filigreed arcs

is it any wonder how blades

of grass weave a yard 

if

you were soil would that

seem miraculous.

The Changes

lilacs erupt and splash the air             the heart sings its memory

as it gathers seeds scattered by death’s glass-gloved hand

warm air rises from thawed fields                   it corkscrews

through budding quivering trees                                 while an infant

suckles the lavender breast with the distant eye of a sun-drawn lake

the seedsong is everywhere               

of nature

opening within nature

the heart remembers these changes

it remembers that morning when the wet fog

turned another key

                                                when you woke

and she was there waiting in her sleep for you

to wake her                

how in shadow she shines.

Illusions

I am a stone you hold

for a river’s secrets

glass spiders

grow in your eyes

            I worry about what else

will grow between us

starlight dies on moons

clouds              windows

asleep

your body listens to its own dying

                        snow falls not

knowing gravity or divinity

saturated in the mystery

we dissolve like time.

The Loom of Wings

in the green secret      of the maple tree

in the palms of the thousand leaf hands

is the earnest thread-making

divined through cellulose spools

of the capillary loom

sap and fiber spun

and wrapped around seed pairs

            and from each seed arches out

an eyebrow spine from which hangs

the papery filigree

of the dragonfly’s wings.

Pendant

like smoke a blue heron floats

down the center of the high-walled

creek bed

                        contrived of morning fog

and sycamore sticks the heron’s opal

bumps against the heart’s teary blindness

it skims the coiling water

and fades.

Hourglass

broadwing lakesong spirals overhead tracing a groove

on the slate mirror of warm water                  a cotton sky

rippling in reflection

                                                the ancient seduction

                        no end to the vanishing veils

            mind

                                                            not as a

function of brain but of water                          mind as

                        musical extension of water.

The Lungs

the clouds

of the body

at death

absorbed

into the body

the colorless

saturation

of decay

the initial

diffusion.

The Urgency

the wind is singing

a waterfall song

through the trees up

along this hillside

I am as alone here as anywhere

where there is usually family

is for me emptiness and suspicion

last night as we walked to the car

she grabbed my hand as much

for my own warmth as for hers

and still the wind spliced us

and now splitting wood

the crease of my thumb

bleeds from a splinter

of oak that I dig

with my pocketknife

sweat beads on my face

though it is cold

and the air crisp.