stillness
stillness wafts
residual
in
bell tones
like raptors
dangled
from down drafts
open arms
gliding overhead
three chords
like fingered wing tips
like
swiftly opened fans
waiting
to prey
how we are haunted
the elements have only just uncovered
this partial jawbone
displayed now in your hands
a piece of whiteworn chalk
seeking slate
earliest of human sentiment
a mouthpiece
a fragment
a fertile rooting
sprung from arid sediments
a wafting hint of suckling
of tongues forming first words
chewing the seeds
of what’s been foraged
of what might be left
how our narrowing molars
once broad for grinding
now sharp and clenching
now incisive
now the very biting winds
unraveling our haunted pasts
like DNA strands spun from
chilly lambswool clouds
caught on the new buds
of late sleeping branches
the mercury of grieving
asleep amid salted, among the fallow
slunk between the marshes
she is a memory of gleaming
she is rising from the moss-softened
from her own rotted earth
her dream residue
sticky and warm tar on sweating timbers
she is a fading underleaf
a curling spiral stranded
her branches sidewindering
and those freight-train questions
she keeps pulling from her knotted hair
all discarded appliances
all landfill rubble
all metal-wobbled thunder
she is and she is and she is
the mercury of grieving
disarming buzzing wires with mittened hands
these ticking these self-mutilating prophecies
all mosquitos she’s still seeking