Even from the clay gut of gravity
I sense the preparation of flight
Light on the air of things
Exposition of rivers fracturing
Under the flashing alder and conjoined
In their crutch of hoarse weeds
Sentences have us believe in
The punctuation of birds in sun
All brought forward to us into
Dark stones shining with mud.
The buzzards scratch the air
Singing their last river words
Because there is no river. Only current.
Singing their last for blackbirds
Because there are none. Tree
Songs only for the stone’s silence.
The secret lament of stone.
Their hard-pressed gravel, the
Old stars nailed to ground
Of shadows swarmed from
Those rainclouds that drink from
The gived-in dirt of stone pickers feet
Proven here that wind
Takes time, and under each footprint
Hurries on nowhere in the blaze of yellow fields.
Through barley hovering on arrows.
Root bones of dream harvests.
Dead seeds awhile in the lovely inside
Lives of here and there
A jar of tractor keys, the loose change
Of horse pills, fingernail manure.
And from the barn, I wear a necklace made from
Spider web grasping beam, pebble-anchored
Floating. This stone keeps balance as every
Other stone here that takes a river-breath, midair.
