history of the quilt that heaved life into stars patched, circled, stitched and square

                                  i put my hand to cloth   cut   tear     and/pull
                                             steam curls from open seams
                              makes rings around the table            covers    each chair the windows the air
                          wet as brow-sweat  staining   the entrenched now    of a plow

                            red flowers      blue bruises
                                  sleepless yellows fall across my lap
                                    like ruth in her favorite dress
                                           will in the garden hoeing
                                                 john allen chasing after rainbows and cats
                                                   these clothes have done their duty
                                                                        covered our nakedness
                                                                          pocketed our sorrows
                                                                                  buttoned our joys
                                                 strode with us as days opened
                                             then closed across our hears
                                                          like morning glories

                       i put my hand to our living breath
                   and sew sew our lives together
               sew til i can't tell where ruth ends
                    or john allen begins
                        all the while will's fiddlin'
                              our old black dog stretched out beside him
                                  growing meaner than what i done chewed   and spat

                                        when mornin's light is done
                                             make us whole
                                                       make us one
                                              one cloth whose heaviness is no burden to bear
                                                  shelter us in the sanctuary of night
                                                      bed us in a comfort of days
                                                         may sleep come   without some   sorrowin' cold
                                                                                   stealin' into our soul

book of flesh

a spell of rain
silverfish streaking through a star-black sky
tremulous lines like extravagant vines
far within the invisible water

wetland of silhouette marsh of shadow
reams of leaves beneath century-high trees

in this Word whose black skin glows phonetic
an imagined surface separates into silent bones of prose

a papyrus bed crosses rivers
lip-edged wind a-wild in its wake
silvery eddies brushstroke mud
their telling redness thick as blood

in owl-dark   a moon walks
     across twig/branch   pebble/rock

tendrils the sheen of hair unfurl
upon pages of night in a precipitous world

everything that listens roams
sleepwalking across fields of bones

what remembrance of breath
winds down night-paths of flesh

praying through the verdant dream
the unwritten   the unspoken   the unseen

    still wood    nameless wood    dim thickness    chasm
   scent of sleep    wary as spider beneath her feet

nowhere sound
nowhere the naked opening that lives between teeth
everywhere language
in the hollow hand of long-fingered leaves
in bones scattered by misty thousands
in the great crimson riverbed stretching towards the sea

in time which is not   century-long feathers
spinning out across sharp-toothed waves
dive down a darkness          

perfume of wing saturates a woodcutter's depths
where earth speaks to an unknown/nearby traveler

across the transient night her waist of dances answers
  this certain secrecy  wrapping her skin   in rain