HUSQUAVARNA X-TORQ

lean in to the reciprocal angle
saw-chain teeth in
red oak dig
the dogs in,
a fulcrum
against
which
to rock
a little, engine
running hot, a little
rich, a little
to the left,
lean in to
that angle
there, body,
saw & prostrate
tree—pressure’s pure
geometry; how much
is lost to kerf in all
the world.

AN ORBIT IS FALLING AROUND A CENTER

I set my precedent down at the angelic altar.
hooded forms moved about me

made of some complex math,
not quite understood as feeling.

there was a field there,
and some asters.

the air was moth-like,
light and strange

I filled my cup at meanings faucet and found it gritty.
biting insects came to bless my soul but couldn’t find it.

I filled my cup at memories beginnings and found it empty.
beercans grew their requisite flowers. we were waiting.

we were full of life, if life is prolonged dying.
we filled ourselves with it. we came up wanting.

there is grief there beside the pasture.
there is tending things, and lots to do

there is love if you can find it,
many flowered edge of sun-flower

fractal and receding
mare-soul flung open,

spores copulating in the soil
as pulsing psychedelia

a sort of low incessant screaming
building in the shimmering air.

I never asked for this, or anything, really,
in the lossless wavelength of all-of-time

I placed my cup out in the rain
I wasn’t sure if it was mine,

or someone else’s. the shining angels
reseeded into seeds of static, left me standing there

alone and loved on the trashy
field of things.

THE SELF IN GRIEF

a mirror wrongly conceived of
is empty.

a mirror is never empty.

the depth to which a mirror
mirrors equal to depth

is coeval. a mirror
is never empty.

neither is it necessarily a prayer

AND EVERY MORNING AFTER

how could a black
capped
chickadee or other
small warm
blooded pair
bonded
bird a purple
finch maybe
resplendent
on a lone
branch bear this
immensity
in its tiny
bird-breast, death
the heaviest thing
a branch can
bear
and go on
bearing perched
on this first
thin beam-
struck limb this
bright December morning,
and

Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of several poetry books and lives in the Arkansas Ozarks with three dogs and one cat.