A hard sill divides the land:
              the waters spill off
 in all directions

Now you are throne velvet
              and wisteria veil
in the endless assizes of parting

All the misplaced abandoned things
              frame the unfit bedraggled ones,
array of the fallen away

This white scar you withhold
              is the inner frame of your skin:
waters break at its ridge, falling

The harsh sap of circumstance
              rises in the gorge, its biting
sugars catch in the throat

(as if an angel, cavorting
              in exultant flight, faltered
and pitched, baffled by piercing

the unimaginable inner wound,
              a feather's hard curve falling
out of the sheerest sky
 
 
 
 
 

              II
 
 

Eyestone, you are that see-through
              you step up out of the brightness
light-flawed film against the screen

light writing, you calque me
              into a language I am loving to learn,
into the words you teach me to love in

syntagm of steps across the flags
              o grammar turned in the changing flesh
your grafitti's promise carved in my door
 
 
 
 
 

              III
 
 

Dawn trails a ravelled sleeve across the sea:
              the drizzled street
tightens the sky like a canvas.

Weary with stretching
              the heart thins to a tympanum,
a wild song strums from its tautness

startled, scattering, the flock spreads 
              and veers, reverse constellation
starring the sky with wingdark

stone archipelago, provisional,
              throw without name, your heart
is a stone set among them
 
 
 
 
 

              IV
 

through your gesture the air grows viscous
as if a wing stirring the air into being
carving the curve where there was none
this curve of your lack by my side

your eye thickens the light
as if sight were seeing itself seeing
a feather falling across the sky
deepening blue against the blue

intolerable silence where you were
drums in the ear, tympanum
stretched to attention, reaching
for the steps that beat through the din
 
 
 
 
 

              V
 

Mouthstar, your uneven rays flare and protest
      yet the wound was foreseen, as if
it was always prepared to meet you
      stepping up into its fierce enclosure

willingly you greet its sparse gift
      of focus: all the filmy
unravelled threads of your unrest,

the fraying, unsettled fragments
      of the discomposed, gather
and assemble in its rough eye.

Unexpected constellation, aperture
      where the dark finds its darkness,
the sewn lips their suture,
      ragged seam of the star-white scar
 
 
 
 
 

              VI
 

strange, how an absence breaks us open:
              is it the sheer scalpel of parting
nicking my taut skin, stored resin

bursting, congealing, a gem
              fraying the light into threadsongs,
fretted lace of our speech?

kernel that thought itself a shell
              breaking open in its turn
a white song spinning off

into the dark of what's to come:
              out of a backdraft buffeted
by passing blades a bird 

spun in the sun, white leaf
              on azure, turning, falling
fascinating skypearl, all

your power is in your wound, the grain
chafes in your keeping
 
 
 
 
 

              VII
 

Things fall from the sky
this bright feather, say,
from who knows what 
remote disaster
 

over such desolate lands
you step, sole trader,
swayed with bearing, salt
cargoes in your eyes and that
 

inexplicable smile
no landing shelters
 
 
 
 
 

              VIII
 

A stone wind
sheds its whorls:
entail of feeling
torn into place

your salt print
scores the sheet 
seams and rips
the straightened cloth