Syllables Are Sometimes Compline, Sometimes Lauds

 

West Quoddy Head
Lubec, Maine

Syllables Are Sometimes Compline, Sometimes Lauds

 

The longed-for is tiny, and tenuous as a syllable.  

                                                                                    Charles Wright

            On Heaven Considered as What Will Cover Us and Stony Comfort

 

It’s the one beat, or one raised finger depending –

how do you do it?  determine

the number of vowel (two) sounds – see

I need to watch my hand want to touch

the formula every simple separation makes.

Thomas to the wound.  Probe to the bone.

 

There’s something to be said for needing

like this, not seeing so much as being

able to reach into where it all is, like after a swarm

of rebellious bees and their queen, convening

briefly in the cleaving collar of a tree,

the cool heat of them an attending blend

 

of protection and affection.  To keep her

nurtured.  To keep her from being

overheated, their buzz and hum a simple

syllable, simply one and then one.  All daughters.

All caught on the pause of their withdrawal.  God,

who doesn’t love or want to love the living

rhythm of it, feel it glide in the myelinized night,

 

blades to ice, bees in trees, until the breech,

meanest of things, saws the limb off & tosses

the thousands of thousands into a sound

of something that can only be called dying,

dying for not having touched or been

touched, dying from having been shoved

from their resounding and resurrecting sun.