Avert
Chalk the circle round about you,
word cut loose from sea-born bone,
the scrapings from the firm beneath you
the stones below
that standing sing
to eddy the peculiar
from the smoothing of the river,
the stones that make in the familiar
all the wonder of your body’s curl.
Spire, spire, labrum sired
each suture bounds a whorl.
Chalk this circle round about you.
The churtsong bring us through
the fossilled chorus of circumference
a thousand ridden curves
from you to You.
Light lays down in cobalt vespering
trammel, trammel round the bed
pin-prick pierce this heart our center
breathing, drifting, blue to red.
Winnow-wash the salt in laughter;
sop the stars with bodied bread.
Touch your tongue to sweet hereafter,
sleep surrounded by your dead.
Refuse the either/oaring over
wet and under, swim instead
as both river and resistance,
in the right side of your head
kiss the left hand doorway’s shomer
Gyrus, sulcus, faerie wed.
Oh Andrew how wonder filled!! I listened first and then read the piece- I heard it one way either/or ing, then read how you wrote either/oaring to give added meaning. Your poems are so rich and much passes me by, but fragments do grab hold and I pray they’re assisting my left dominant brain to “swim as both river and resistance,” and “faerie wed.” Thank you as always ♥️
Wow!