Vicus

Barningham Moor

roadkill hare

in thin dress

borne of glint

& yet

distilled

semiquaver

breathless

pearl-

essence

takes care

of the tremor

rain gilds

& cleansed

fused

among choirs

chastened

slippage,

your tongue

you sieve

you flinch

crowd scene

the innocent

taste

deep

in the lung’s

blind taper

metobelus

prodigal

in almslight

River Bytham

Myrrh will not grow here, nor lavender, but willows, yes

here in the paradise of willows

I seize your harp & hurl it into the current –

Splayed by the imaginary, it evolves new wings

& played first by fresh, then by salt, only then by blood

Imagine the first men to hear that unearthly threnody –

looking up from their pollen counts

& dendrochronologies, their variable apparels

(it must have been a season like this, some ingathering) –

Taken captive & borne away, the flood

recedes from the documentary, merely glacial, a Babylon

brings geology forward through time

to greet us, hands wet from fishing in deep water

catching everything in nets, except that vanished psalm –

_____________

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the long poem Testament (BOA Editions, 2015). Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch. His seventh collection, The Earliest Witnesses, is due out in November 2020 from Tupelo (USA) and Carcanet (UK).