Willow In Spring Wind: A Showing by Jorie Graham
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Pointless homesickness. Pointless shudderings.
Wind now clockwise: surrendering this way.
Wind now counter: surrendering that.
Wide tree with its good throat up from the dark
flinging forth embroiderings of inaudibles,
limbs jerked like a cough--then like a credo, flung--
then broken oars, then oars not broken at all but thrumming in
unison into
the open sea of my
holy watching.
Clasp me, trellis of glancings,
delicatest machine--
body of the absconding god--
replacing something (I know not what)--
undulating, muttering liquidly . . .
Is it my glance or is it the willow kneeling wildly now
as if looking for corpses,
dragging its alphabet of buds all along the gravely walk--
scraping--ripping--along the seemingly insatiable
hardness of gravel? Also the limestone wall they slap . . . .
Where is the sharp edge that we seek? Where
the open mouth?--
the true roughness--halo distended--
glittering with exaggeration--
dazzling the still philosophies--
From “The Errancy” by Jorie Graham (Ecco: 128 pp., $22.) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.
