Apparently
Summon the snow, there is an emergency of cruelties.
To the joyful mysteries, the mysteries of light, the sorrowful mysteries, the glorious mysteries,
add the streaming mysteries. Says the detective: Venerable, the Bede may have been, but not clairvoyant. When your wild shrinks to green the size of a fete, so shrinks your unknowing?
The mountains go the color of porphyry; sun burns frost off the playground. The children of
the valley turn verbs into nouns. What may become mannerism starts as wonder. The children lay on their backs with notebooks above them in one hand, pencils in the other. Some use their coats as pillows. Far under them, jasper builds its orbs.
We are falling back tomorrow. One less hour for the mysteries of light. One less hour for the
man and the woman to meet in the park called Sherwood Forest which sits at the edge of the sagebrush basin in the center of a plain subdivision called, kid you not, Nottingham. At the lovers’ last visit, city men were blowing out the sprinklers so the water wouldn’t freeze,
expand, and crack the hoses.
I leave the electric candles on all day. It took me years to come around to the idea of them.
Apparently the apparition was actually a dog.
I cloud you, a kid says when I crouch down to see what he’s writing. Buddy I cloud you too.
Now the mountains are the pink of salmon sliced open on the riverbank.
And the stranger by the fountain: Her skin papers, is she a luminaria
Another vicar another murder. Apparently war drove the veterinarian mad. All those horses
shot for what.
Apparently the lovers will not be going back next year.
Apparently the mountain’s a backlit creche.
Apparently everyone in this neighborhood has three children: one to push the stroller, one to
walk beside it.
Apparently this fertility is due to the temple’s proximity but from the park you can only see
the park: not the mountains, not any building mediating between drought and cirrus.
Oh no flypaper boiled for arsenic: appears to have killed the stableboy.
And in my mind’s eye the electric candles have come to appear more candle than candles.
Epithalamion
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury.
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this:
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund:
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
darning the window the boy looks out and beyond
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
darning the window the boy looks out and beyond
to the abiding and the dissolution, the cattle hunkered like boulders,
the dissolution and the abiding, the abiding,
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
darning the window the boy looks out and beyond
to the abiding and the dissolution, the cattle hunkered like boulders,
the dissolution and the abiding, the abiding, that the words
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
darning the window the boy looks out and beyond
to the abiding and the dissolution, the cattle hunkered like boulders,
the dissolution and the abiding, that the words
(as the bulbs which may be ground into flour)
Thunder but my mind imperfect, the hour wintered I bury this
text for you beneath the desert not starved
but fecund: the snakes sleeping in their nest, the angel
watching the boy clean his rifle, as the demiurge says
I am the bride and the bridegroom, the hour wintered to crystals
darning the window the boy looks out and beyond
to the abiding and the dissolution, the cattle hunkered like boulders,
the dissolution and the abiding, that the words
(as the bulbs which may be ground into flour)
sweeten the dirt.
____________
Kerri Webster is the author of four books of poetry: Lapis (Wesleyan, 2022), The Trailhead (Wesleyan, 2018), Grand & Arsenal (University of Iowa, 2012), and We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (University of Georgia, 2005). The recipient of a 2024 Laureates Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, she is currently Writer in Residence for the state of Idaho.
Comments