Polyphony

Polyphony

Recite the name
of the one you name
in the many you name
over the water glass, 
as your fingers sing
along the rim, 
that still wet trail
that circles the sea
where the line unspools
weighted by word, both bread and barb,
down into the mouth that takes in
the river that the tip of the spear bound 
to the place you stand
when the place you stand
is the way you wish home.

Contour the cusp of each syllable
as glass calls back through fire
to sand while dust stirs in clay 
and clay rings in rib and rib and rib
until all come to Tree 
on the wet breath of Night.

Divine hoof from toe
as you trace the curve 
of what-once-was-presence
in each print pressed
into the wet earth of these tales,
we who walk where,
beneath our stride,
the water and blood whisper together
of a god who died but never left,
of a company calling backwards down the clades
against each nail-struck-cry
to an attendance of siddur
birthed in a sheltering olive dusk
by a love for Here still sworn 
in the heel-kiss of every step
once wished, once willed, 
to never be taken.

And to this call some come
those with no elsewhere,
all Here still wet with G-d gone
animal, the wash of scent and tide,
the weep of vein and ventricle
now drawn up into stem and plume
a blur of meristem and nail’s oblation.

Re-member world from spit and lash and sibilance, 
the patched, the stitched,
the palimpsest as half-lit script 
a slipping silver thing sea-ed out beyond all grip
on the tear-tongued morph of a voweling
from a heart on all fours, ear to the grail
and all Who abides there against
the want of those wishing to pin 
a tell-tale messiah
to the immutable monody of Ur.