Noted :: Knotted
The phonic image- bearer, sound- bringer: Persephone yet not her, per se— basket and weaver together gathered blooms from single roots, now pulled through gulf and glyph to earth and death groans scattered like grains I would follow that billowing gown run through ruins grown to runes
W a n d e l n *
To wander * To transform the root:
Walking through plateaued Green River
grounds, tracing what that maker wrote
through sediment and canyon routes *
Walden carried on back, writing ever
to wander, to transform the roots
and echoes living in this land * Calf trots,
hoof caught in a bleached skull, over
ground: Tracings: What that maker wrote
names here * How antelope in rut
migrate and mount in October,
wander to transform their root
genetic script * Once DDT-wrapped
peregrines unfurl, recover
ground, retracing what that marker wrote
in songbird prey * From cliff-hung scrape, concrete
bridge, who can say what the falcon hears?
A wandering, transforming rotor-root *
Ground traces * All that these makers wrote.
Sister Bay Birches
—white, white hairpins
charcoal in our joints—
what though the wind be a lathe?
we are at the barre
and watch: we stretch
even so ourselves
and whisper, listen—
unlatch that leather grip—
this is when December starts
scratching out its waltz
Cow skull image courtesy Shutterstock.