Streams

Argonaut's Vow

Pushed prow southerly into the golden wind:

hurt the eyes: gold pelted water: so looked less far away:

plovers huddling on the tide's last piece of shore:

Rise up in brightness: clap wings::

I told myself I'll go where eagles go: if to brimstone:

my wake a narrow river back

to its source in cedar: and when sunlight embers

the shore's soft fleece will be before me.

The Prophecies of Paracelsus

That twig of light, that branch, that
fork, that form.
Beyond that, a city. A horse drowning in
a river, and beyond that, a city. Wildfire, and beyond that,
a city. God, a slippery thing,
an eel, is twined
from our hands. That rainy hum is
the wharf, is the light that etches a bridge
between pronouns, the bottle
of amber formaldehyde, the infant
orangutan, the wing
of a gull stitched to its scapula. Here is a river
drowning in a horse’s dark eye. Devitalized, humming, rainy,