Until Shiloh

Oh child, sleep easy, sleep

in the turning to winter, on the

hinge of the rounded year:

Until Shiloh comes,

with his bones made of

sunshine, and coffee grounds

his blood, and his feet

will turn the hills to butter

and he’ll fill the skies with wine.

Yes, when Shiloh comes,

with his mouth of bronze

and his sugared clothes, to melt

the waxen hills—his fleshly tongue

the lightning burst,

his eyes are living coals.

Shiloh comes on back a mount

of gingerbread, peppermint sword

in radiant hand. The

scepter has not passed

from Judah, and now the

tribute enters in, like a lion

if not like a murdered lamb.

Kiss him, this lovely son, lest he be angry—

you will find him wrapped in swaddling-clouts.

Hexenhammer

In the cracked and bleeding winter,

like leaves beneath the lying snow,

I read portents in my father’s

Irish hands.

                        In search of the cord

that binds the severed self, holds

hand to wrist and word to tongue,

keeps up the kissing of bone to bone

and flesh to heart. Keep breath in me,

when blood itself sings out for

dissolution.

I grow tired of your incense mutters

and the way you talk so knowingly

of the alchemy of the soul, preening

psychopomp tracing human destiny

in the palm’s careless lines.

But I heard delusion in the hammered

keys, and behold, my eyes are opened.

On the sidewalk in the bay of bricks,

I saw forms and images where the sky

as sullen silver sits on top of spires

that I have seen and sounded. Quick,

now, the water-song, when it sweeps up

into the wind to writhe and spin. As of old:

            cold-crying summer-slayer,

            Sleet-Spitter, crack crystal—

            come work us to worship.

Not by star-signs and houses of influence,

but by the word’s own time and rhythm,

as dust teaches dust what is meant by

wisdom.

            In the cracked and bleeding winter,

like leaves beneath the lying snow, I

read portents in my father’s Irish hands.