The Well

angels “all have tired mouths” says Rilke
my mouth is tired too but not the way he meant
a single pelican left to right like script 
untangle this and you are left with the world
some feathers and bones, a cloudless sky
I had a dream that was the news, a dream that was real
scarlet-flowered pomegranate tree
soldiers and at the center of the village 
a well poisoned by bodies of slaughtered animals
seven thousand miles away
fog makes trees impossible to translate
vanishing the world and then its startled reappearance 
as shore pine, poison-oak cliff 
astonished into being, red leaf floats in a green pool

Meredith Stricker | If I Get Lost >>
Contents | Mudlark No. 54  (2014)