pitch

Pitch, blackest-black,
You do not know it yet,
but someday you will watch me jumping off of rock cliffs
swallow-like, gold in the water.

Salt-spray will wash against our house,
foundation of bones webbed-in-earth,
together we make limestone, chalk;
we are the old bodies of sea-creatures and sponge-fossils,
transformed into light-shades.

My house has always been that one,
in the distance, white chalk-walls,
pebble strewn, blue-shadow-on-white cliffs.

I am woman in the black shawl, village creeper,
I am ribbon wound, kohl-eyed,
spirit-companion.

You are beloved one, laughing-eyes, smoke from lips.

elg 2010

Hardy (feels like love and winter at the same time)

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

Thomas Hardy

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales.
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.

scents.

ambergris
castoreum, civet, honey bee and hyraceum

brihadaranyaka upanishad

The human being has two states of consciousness: one in this world, the other in the next. But there is s a third state between them, not unlike the world of dreams, in which we are aware of both worlds, with their sorrows and joys. When a person dies, it is only the physical body that dies; that person lives on in a nonphysical body, which carries the impressions of of his past life. It is these impressions that determine his next life. In this intermediate state he makes and dissolves impressions by the light of the Self.

The birds are whispering together.

Cold husks of leaves and seeds litter the ground,
scuttle through pathways to the street.

You were the one that found the rocks.
The layered soapstones, the agates, the moss-in-quartz.

When we kicked along the edge of town,
It felt like daylight,
it felt like just before-sundown,
it felt like winter hinge,
day-hinge…. in breath between day and night.

What was this we used to call it years ago?
Evensong?
What Rilke called it?

Spectre stone,
Rock formation
Shadow form.

The lit fuse of memory is running its trace through my storehouse tonight
shining indiscriminant on that summer season,
afternoons stacked brightly like old slides,
packed tightly like clothes in a trunk,
dust and yellow grass, heat and edge of nothing town.


I don’t know what I am trying to remember.
But I miss that person, most dearly.

You are ravens-head,
lampblack.
I am powdered ash, white stone,
goldenrod.

Together we make a circuit,
halo-haze, coiled spring, resin-ground.

You are obsidian,
lava-ground, jet-stone.
I am cindered-flowers, dry marigold,
sandalwood, sweet smoke.

You are inscriber, chalk-marker,
Graphite-sewn.
I am worked-on, cinder-prone,
Soapstone.

(older poem, elg 2010)