from North gives flesh to wind
His longing, almost laughing, wrestles west.
Shouts “O land, sunshine, I’m your hunter!”
I am the fur wrapping a maid’s shoulders,
the golden torque around her throat. The geese
fill the air until no one sees them;
are the enemies of luck. Infanticide
spreads rampant ‘til only age sits smiling
at North’s table. Secret agents eat
elsewhere, grope each other; the North, in
his cups, takes no notice. Not even once.
“As wise as thou art cruelle” deep-etched,
this form of a Queen.
Power expresses place, grips
location shape-shifting, helping as
air. Masses crystallize into a
lad, wrapped in nightly winds, in chimney
smoke, in games of lore. I loved his
“And all my honest faith in thee is lost.”
So blow the results here
until this rule finds a pause, ‘til each
wolf finds its magnetic declination.
Today the North finds a boy to bring ruin.
“O upon easy sunshine, deception.”
Everything yet can be exhausted.
Yet bones hoar. The North will not last, cannot
hear his wicked boy’s treachery. Beneath
all this is only a name, just ice masquerading
as Queens howl to other directions.
So black geese loft into geometry
that even he cannot escape. Whist deals
a trick hung as light in winter, and this
time a girl. A name made unstable
so the locus shifts to nether, to her hair,
to tongues shaped mongrel, singing defiant.
Now, a garden and invoked wind:
an invitation to “Let my lover
come, let him eat his pleasant fruits.”
The North incarnates as a song, a lad,
a woman in a song, as geese, as fur, as
milk and ice, as roaring, titular unto
itself, a desire for place, wildness,
as wolves, as prison, as a trick,
an voyage from south, a tryst,
unmapped drone, to a flat field,
to a picnic, to one sort of escape.
Featherboard Writing Series 