For David, on his Birthday

 For David, on his Birthday

1.

A rhyme simple as Ginko leaves, the single point smears

outward, without incursion of complexity, complication;

everything that falls out from Else.

Else. A point enters time. The tree grows downward,

irregular but reasonable, like someone with a captive 

audience. Your uncle Eve.

2.

Pillar cast

from green opal

Depth-Masonry, climb

extract names from light

through the athanor of the real, elemental

Sisterhood of Everywhere, after

all invidious geometrics of I

there’s unblemished Babble-stuff

a pattern that’s no building

but to be built in,

the suggestive castle amethyst

beyond the sleeper’s leaves

on the Soul’s Great Ocean (G.R.S.M.)

your own Black Lake.

3.

Welcome to the Illuminati.

4.

Light moves backwards

from the image to the gems she wears

dream parades through flesh

hir boculs þei were of barys ston;

hir stiroppis þei were of cristall clere,

what becomes stone is the border, pump

squeezing Everything from Empress

Emptiness. 

A sailor once told me

there’s an island of owls

who gaze each other to sleep

in the polar darkness. Thereabouts

the bezoar is holding down your map.