"wintering the sheer-note: a needle passed at the heart."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
December
Oven-sent. A mincing heat. The boiled plum _______________________________________________________________ April
The glottened land breathes again. Bulbs thrusting out
_______________________________________________________________
of light. Oh holy crust. Oh… choirs lift
through each kitchen wireless – a cathedral
squeezed into everyone, a child, his solo
wintering the sheer-note: a needle passed at the heart.
Another walks by the hives, listens
for the winged-hum, the activity of angels,
for the hymn inside these ordinary temples – listens,
an ear pressed to the freezing wood for news.
A man in a blue raincoat crunches
over the Meadows with heavy satchels:
Odin* perhaps, visiting each farm now,
leaving as he goes, a little bread for them.
* from Norse mythology, Odin wandered the earth disguised as a stranger.
In Yorkshire it was believed he left gifts on the doorsteps of old farmsteads.
their rich purses. Look at them flirting across the lawn.
Perfumes call the dizzy ones in, liquor the morning
and a world already bevied lifts a skirt, bends a bit
from the weight of each passenger who lies face down
in the plural waters: the diesels of spring.
The wild rose, long stemmed, has begun praising itself
for nothing behind the chapel. April. A cletch of geese
paddle the mud banks– their webbed prints opening
behind them like fans: scalloped, almost the same foot
dripping through the marsh. How ritualized it is:
the day carrying on, twinned, indistinguishable – desire
which finds itself in everything. How sanctimonious really.