"In more precision now of light and dark”
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Dawn"
Just on today platform subway as in disguise . guitar
rockers played like down out buskers, I phone mapped
faces game surprise how train stop curious joined in
song, cross piece to you I string.
I tape snip after host glove hands . body bits ghost
picked . white wall scrub painted stadium doors pew
Charleston floors . in knee deep prayers I sink
to save they’ll call if they find anything.
Up over ocean bloat face floats . helifishers swish
blade wish one arm might here! here! lift : shell case
breath holding news found where? in you for gone
clear life I reach.
Angler Hopkins lines “instress” hitch mercy that
outrides the all of water. My feet ground break neck
lace hung fate . belief? I stone skipped there.
Come spring grain green I arc back spinal count
the ways ledge crowd point wait unherd I range
hiatus fears unsheathe inside you born for easter
tight wind sheets fall leaves rake I beyond
doubt risen now . sea ward earth now.
– W.W.
A HEART HEAVIER THAN THE EARTH
Fly above
clouds within sunlight
and find yet one more edge of eye
where a vast silence of arctic white
surrenders to such fine clarity
of blue as promises nothing
but a dark heart pining for its
rarity ‒ heart split between pulses
of footfall and of winglift, between
calls of raincloud and of sunbeam,
and between the lull of dreamt and
dreaming Earth’s seasons ‒ and the shock
of sensing, beneath those modal moods,
a sure determined rising back
to her Dreamer’s womb of Light far
finer than any azure the heart,
denser than clouds, can only yearn for.
(from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 