Midweek Poem August 17
Path Word
Where the meadow goes down to dark
and meets the woods, there we opened
the weave of the wall, there by the stumpÂ
that receives the weight and feather of the dead
something has risen the buried,
drawn the path with bone
an arrow of vertebrae, femur, toe
unstitched from hip
fletched in fur Â
pointing me inÂ
to the dark between the trees.
Miriam mistress of game
Chauvet to Birkenau, warden at the gates
take me through the dark mouth
of the cowry shell strung round my neck,
through the smoke of that birth story,
the wet straw and star-stabbed bleatÂ
around a life willed short, empire to priest,Â
and the ever pressing god of vine and foreskin.
I, turncoat, caught between shekinah and woad,
here at the edge of the boreal line
belly of ash and sea, mewling again gold
all thirty six of the Nistarim whispering
bread and wine, nails and nightword
until everywhere I look, people:
antlered, barked, stone against stone
singing now below, and a sense of hands upon me.
Woman, master mine,
I wonder, as the tines of the moon sharpen
and the chant in the garden lists toward grapple,
where, this night, is your son?
It has been a bit of a minute since my last post. Sorry for that. I have a series of posts finally just about ready and the first one will be up Saturday morning. After that I will try to give you a midweek poem and the pieces in the series each following Saturday for a good while at least. Today’s poem is bound up with part one of this series but I wanted to set it out alone first, sorta an intro. As always, feedback is sweet. Looking forward to being more present here. Thanks for subscribing and reading this business.
Andrew
Andrew, this is so beautiful, deep, dark...Christopher Alexander says everything is alive, to one degree or another--houses, stones, paintings--and this poem is an example of the truth of that, to a high degree: It seems like it's own plant growing out of the ground. I know you wrote it, but the universe generated it--it's really really real:
"...Miriam mistress of game
Chauvet to Birkenau, warden at the gates
take me through the dark mouth
of the cowry shell strung round my neck,
through the smoke of that birth story,
the wet straw and star-stabbed bleat
around a life willed short, empire to priest,
and the ever pressing god of vine and foreskin..."
Man o man o man....
Andrew, thank you for the beauty and the mystery of this word art. Your creation (as Graham said....universe-generated!) invites me to slow reading...to catalytic reading. I read "Path Word" and didn't "understand" it, however, I recognised the invitation to slow down, to absorb, to read with all of me. I read it once, I read it twice, I read it a third time. Each time was like slowly stepping through the "wardrobe" and I was glimpsing Narnia! I read it again this morning.....and I can see the vistas!
Thank you for attracting me to this art form....you've deepened and expanded my world....it blows me away actually.