Stubble

I rage and rest.

I think of you
breaking the twigs of my nest.
The carpet threads, the new-
fallen hairs you tore
with clipped control, and flew.

 I famished more
than on the first fair crack
of crying dawn, when I was young and poor.
You whistled down the seaming on my back,

crackled my wet mouth with food
that overspilled like grain from a fat sack.
It was warm on that bough, and good.

Alone and still, I heard the tenderest sound.
I feathered in your moss, your splintered wood,
and grew. You ripped me out: 
 clawed, cast me down--
I feed on stones, flail heavy with the ground.

Fighting

It's something like a desert, something

withering of throat and limbs. The blood's slow

caking from the edges, saving the heart.

It goes a little way, still warm. A thin thrum

of wings, darkening.

and there's that place

by the shrub, where you left him

like a hump of earth, the shadows of two leaves

stretching over his dry lids. It's the bones of something.

Stooping into something like a well,

a brown shallow with a rim

of sallow mud, speckled with dead

wings, and filling your skin.

Waked

Father, your snow falls

like leper's sores,

like scales from blinded eyes.

Father, it falls like

your bread from heaven.

Your every word

falls like that,

and washes--

Oh, Father, the crust

falls from my dead heart.

The earth breaks

and the tomb creaks open.

--as white as that,

when the smear

and the maggots have been on me

not for three days,

but from the womb!

Flicker

I saw a flicker at the window today. A flash
of orange, hornet in his beak. He looked
at me, and bit his catch in two. We paused
a moment at the glass, considering
what creature moved upon the other side
lifting the wings or arms the Lord has made
for flight--
                  or in my case, but to adjust
the curtain for a better view of him
at which movement he fled with his two wings.

Forged

Because the men had work they meant

to do, they pulled two strips of metal

from a wall

in back of an old church

(surely no use to anyone there)

and carted them back

and laid them flat

on their anvil. One of these

had come without much prying. It lay

still, eager to be hammered

 to forceps

or a wheel. The other piece

had taken a great portion of an hour

to wrench free; mayhap it had thought

the wall its destiny. This one had bent

a little in the struggle. Thus it lay

at angles with the anvil, on its side

and seemed to tremble as the hammer rose

and quiver as it fell.

The blows were swift

and unrelenting blows. The men

knew what they were about, and soon

the first had taken their desired shape.

They set it to its task, and turned again

to straightening the other for the same.

They put it in the fire for a bit.

The room was dark. The crooked metal lit

a small place on the anvil, where it writhed

as though it felt

the heat, and feared

to feel the blow.

                     How hard it was to shape. The anvil rang

and rang and rang and still the metal bent

and twisted every way

but which they meant. The sparks

flew up like hundredfolds of dying stars.

Perhaps they beat too much upon one side,

because at last it folded

on itself. And when they sought to beat it out

again, it cracked along the flaw,

shuddered,

and snapped. The crack was long.

The metal was too weak.

            Ah, well, the men said. It was our mistake.

The flaws were in its core. A solid rod

is what we ought to use. We'll start again

with good materials. With this they tossed

the broken halves into the dust

outside.

They waited there a good part of a year,

brittle with weather and the rust that grew

with every rain, until a Hand that knew

its work took hold:

plucked them from the ground

carried them home

laid them by its fire

felt them over closely for each flaw

lowered them into the hottest flame

placed them on the anvil end to end

hammered evenly on every side

fused the ends together into one

and when the room was still, the metal too

was quiet, resting, ready 

to be shaped.