HELLEBORE (PETERBOROUGH)

beneath their masks busking the water table

little divot-processions of blossom

I will let you shepherd my night-errand

I will let you etch the grief of my salute

                        —vastly intractable

one may feast, the single forest of the eye

one may reach for the night’s green map

a surface gloss, moving like a mist

      beneath the tree-line’s brightening tone

the flesh, broken, rests inside the singing

eye, an invisible flood

come Empire, read the breath’s glass book

the skin-tight membranes of the houses

the psalm the mowers bleed right through

DAUGHTER OF MENDING,

COME INHERIT

now music must pray back another guest

heavy & pleated, biological in its defects

I will love faith’s broken city, I will

        quench my Lord’s deep fire

for the orchard’s sake, its tangent chapel