pel–
Take the powder from the hollow
of the fruit, take the pulse
pale as your falcon. Feed it
to your falcon, and it will dream
of fallow deer, red ink on old parchment.
We were Chinese we understood these things,
how a horse becomes egg, lizard,
a woman by a tree.
There was a monk
who knew, sat by the roadside in his
folding chair, who I asked for
some directions, to Göbekli Tepe
perhaps, or just some place in a hill
the way one does, at an angle
and looked busily up at the leaves
and waited for his answer.
But the monk was gone, the chair
folded up, nothing left of him
but the letters (unvoweled
priestly language, to keep the people
from their power) had entered, folded into
the leaves, the patterns birds wheeling
right, is what he left: moment’s
guesswork, answer, that tells us where
to be (and it is, after all, Being you wish
to move).
A powder smoothed in
the folds of her skirt, a dust within skin.
All you need to write is water, a blade of
grass and something wet, Death,
to press to the book and it speaks again.
