Of Golems and Mouse-jaw

Well, I am finally without fever. The present plague proved surprising well adjusted to both jab and desire. It kicked my ass. But I feel like my mind is clearing and hope to have a (very) belated intro to this substack out in the next few days which should make a good paring with the poems I have to offer for today. I am really glad to see some folks finding this substack and giving it a chance. It would mean alot to hear from anyone any echos or protests that the words kick up. The upcoming post is a grope after the type of trueing that myth does well in the morning after certainty that I believe many of us now sift the dust of the day in search of, our bits of bog-down from which to knit a modest homecoming. The Golem piece (second below) is a preface to that business. The first poem here is a bit of fever whimsy I wanted to share. I hope folks stay with me here. It is good to share.

Antler

Last night, standing at the door,
I saw the messiah. A young girl
this time, no more than eight, she stood
under the fullest moon in the softest rain
where she calmly coaxed the leavings
of an owl down a wheelbarrow sluice
mining for the jawbones of her mice.

As I came close, she raised her eyes
and, mouth unmasked, 
tapped two fingers lightly to her lips.

Breath, she said
is both Spirit and a thing
of falling dark come through the grate
and then released, warmed or not,
and round again
until you must--motherwort
and knotweed on your tongue--
say uncle and walk east.  

Your hound will meet you then
coming across the field, take you
where the sun sleeps in the mounds
to bay then brow and, once again, to burr
where wind waits to walk you on from there.

With that she shrugged,
tapped the tip of her twig
on the barrow rim
and returned to sluice and bone.

As the rain slowed to mist,
for the first time with this fever gnawing bone
I left the house for moon and wet,
found a stretch of reindeer moss
and did as I was told.






Golem

The guttering rains
ring the genizah,
this attic suspended
on gesture and sign.
Mute among names
once uttered in unison—
the strings of creation's
Descent and decline—
those cords of dictation
now ash on the Vltava,
I lie on my left side
under the rafters
slurring the schema
and sounding divides.

Each breath an escapement’s
down-counting of pathways,
a scapegoat shekinah
sent forth from memory,
a whispering procession
of the high and the bowed
crossing the floorboards,
a stirring serenity
that raises the dust
into pillars of cloud
leading now forward
now back down the line.

I am touching now neverness,
meeting its stare,
fingering the aleph,
deep as I dare
into river silt summoning
salt, sea, and kind
to the fevering brow,
to the mouth of the mine
as peripherals mumble
and rifts recombine.

Garret suggestions
pool in depressions
left by the hoof prints
of Dybbuk and stray.
I watch my words border
the semblance
of something
mouthing an order
against what is written:
here all is silent,
just cinder and clay.

I remember the stitching
the rhythm of sequence
the rifling of morphemes
the raking for soul
and, locked in the throat
the foment of person
despite claims of the certain,

who stake upon silence:
here it is written
all you are— clay.

But hid in the helix
are words there repeating
like the chanting
that mothered me
molding me so.
A mute there is speaking
from a break in the cell wall
a mouthing, a mastering
comes up from below,
the dumbstruck betraying
the silence for signal
a teller with listeners,
encircled, come home.