Afterbirth
Summer Edward
rain falling
on a barren house
is an afterbirth
of melody filling
the green yard; a nursery
of birds awakens.
once you had a voice
like them, you sang
of first light in quiet
wards of early hours
before the curettage of words.
yours was a wordless
song, travelling deep
canals like the fruit dove’s
cry, expelling
joy in the earth.
now the rains have left
like a wet nurse
in the night. no longer cut cords
with blood, no longer bottle
spice, your voice,
but feed your child, your soul
who is not born
still.
when she awakens
like the birds
she will
sing
down
the sky.
Mors Poetica
Summer Edward
I, born to dream,
see in gleam of eye
what lovers see,
make light of hunger
as this lucent island street
makes light of rain,
opal puddles in the
heat ebbing like an oil
slick or a swimming
pain, my patient
pupil reflecting again
to see what shall be
learnt from island streets.
One day I too will
go down with the dead
who trickle o’er
the coccyx of the hill,
descend upon the
studious spines of men
to where the river
finds at last her mouth,
swallowing the ash,
the sea will shout:
The dreamer now is dead!
I am her final grave!
Now I nest within
my brooding life,
no house hen made,
perhaps no preening wife;
to reverie alone
my soul has clave.
O hear ye living dead:
there is a need that sings
in trembling tongue like
the river embouchered
over her horns.
And dreams so full
of the martyred
singing of birds
in the courtyard where
a colibri collapsing
upon her egg, wings
so swift they are
absent from this world,
is a memento mori
in a crown of thorns.
At night, my pillow
composes my skull; earth’s
revolution breaks out
a flag of stars
in the window. I cross
my heart and bear
toward my calvary.
