Laugh of the Firedrake
After Don Domanski
"I walk along like blood seeking its wound"
Like the parched whispers of roots
Descending from a sky of sea-holly
Down into the coiled fist of dusk
In search of air and copper.
Down with the ones who know winter by the gravity in their spines
And the slow, soft patterns earthworms trace
Those dark spaces attending the sound of juniper cones
Biting hard on a labyrinth of rain.
A solitude that does not fear the green of fire.
Down where you might make out the last bough of the breaking night
Blood-marked and shadow-wracked
Where the curling fingers of new prayers open then cluster
Sometimes catching in the throat --- thorned
In the interstices of soil and bark: the kind that echo
Like the laugh of a firedrake
Or the last sunk hand of the damned.
The Path
Once there were bells in the promise
Blood on the nail
And plenty of prey in the trap
There was bread on our tongues
Crocuses and cutworms
And many dead hares on our lap
But with no swallows on the chime now
And the mist ever-rising
The path was never a path
The morning is over
Ever was over
There is no forward or back
So with needle and thread
And teeth in the throat
Let us now bind our eyes
The morning is over
Ever is over
The path was never a path.
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