Or Chicks Peeping Geometrics

or chicks peeping geometrics


or chicks peeping geometrics
a scattering of corn seed
haruspicative hands
bag to morning air
arc rainbow wide
o star horse fly
broken bridle
fence back
plumage
map tomorrow
crow our comfort
cluck clucking clocks
this be true of all evidence
gathered we move among them glad;

the chicks of glad philosophy

* * *

or if greening
her mouth
widens

& longing
breaks
too

soon
or if red
the hands

part first as
a lingering fall
the fingers trails

of what cuts an emptiness
filled softly with clouds in bloom;

for she who says all longing fields the frame

* * *

green pale spikes
piercing hard
gray bark

(the ice harder
still than
years—

how tender
to deny
slowly)

winter scales,
exhausted,
thin

(how cold
the emptiness
between the stars

as if summer ignored
the looseness of the weave—
attended only the heat of penetration)

burning suns or points
of leaves & even
breaking

how she slips
this terrible
conviction

it was not
a single
cut—

beauty
teems
light;

a million mouths said: light;
a million answered: dark

* * *

merciful rain
blood red
curling
bird
its wings
like the skin
of green hills
her small flutter
mornings in blue
cups of kitchen
geography
he was &
was not
here

maps
& codes
of songs
chatter
silver
wear
me
she
is
if
you
wake or
reach
X

clay gullies
moon pools
mirror sand
swirl of
hands
stir
sip
slow
a beak
soft tongue
harsh weather
her sweater pulled
tight & her legs bare
her lips a book of stars;

the last breath of winter:
she in the adobe hills

* * *

where it turns
the teeming
light at
once
already
there gone
a white bursting
immediately voided
light not light here not here
everywhere & nowhere always never
her lips say & the years dissolve in his mouth
call me into existence
forget the name
of every god
the ghosts
of those
twisted
ropes
fall
to
it

she answers empty mountains
with the language of clouds
birds—cupped blossoms
feathering her throat
or how fire swims
distance breaks
& she pulses;

a lamp floating: how she gates this heart


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry