from The Magdalene Tower

1

Timeless, this moment intersects with time,a mooring stone among apple trees—

or, more accurately,fruit trees which resemble apple trees—

their delicate glossy leaves white undersidethat move a little and make a sound like the tide

coming in over sand.The stone, submerged, in soft grasses, under the wild lime

where the linnet's nest is a cup of grass.West, in the Hinnon Valley,

the latter rainshave the smell of summer

and the damp road, pink from crushed stoneturns up through the fields where barley is sown

among knotgrass, some, and thistletill farther, at salt's marshes, one cannot pass.

*

Become passersby he'd said. Jesus,the measured one. Become a likeness

in the place of likeness.Become, you see—what—the two are one:

male & female not male nor female, the same—inside, outside, the same. Don't sever by name.

Fitting for the gods—and glad—to worship us.

2

The gravel cracks as he, from a crouch, stands.Mary—look—if two are one

dead, alive, both heldin a bigger circle (or smaller):

pied ion, minute grain, the gift, existence:To dissolve is no sadness. To rise up & Dance

is no more the miraclethan the decay that's made soil from barren sands.

*

The gravel cracks. He, from a crouch, stands.The taste, sudden, of dust and oranges

in the quick windthat scrapes from bark small branches.

He lifts his hand to pull the twigs from his hairand a black cricket clings, his wrist bare.

A step, and it launchesacrid into air; at my ankle, lands.

*

I could trace this line over & over:the shifting wind that whitens

with the fullers' fires;how the arch of his sandal tightens;

on the arm, outheld, black wings blur & shrilljust as nightjars—dawns—on Sodom's salt flats will;

then, silence. The dark arcsto graze my small bone with the scent of white clover.

3

When I look to see: only air & tree.Memory's a gesture of touch:

warm on lashes, sun;limbs the curve of shadow brushed,

a shoulder ranging when he takes four steps;linen on linen, a rush, quick of breaths

and a hand, set down—the hushof dust settling beside his bended knee.

*

When his fingers skim the back of my ankle& the hairs of it (I'm looking down at his head)

the infinite numbersspill from the cracks, molten & gold,

smooth, unbearable against the rough whorls,even the air becomes jagged & knotted, burls

unbudded—unbreathablethe taste of clay clumping in nose & throat—till nothing Rankles

the ribcage, grown still. From my bones he fingersthe marrow, sucks the singing

come into me, my ownslender sternum, disarticulate

the smell of warm earth (flax in hay; in summer, stone)sensations but a hint of the wholly known:

the broken bell's ringinggoes on, and in the worms' whispers lingers.