This contract is not singular.
It is present in each shaft
of the chickadee’s chestnut feathers
holding to Alesh. Part them
on the wing or on the belly down
to hot skin and touch the document.
The bonds of this contract are plural
and solitary, present in coon paw
and river print, in swallow and scat,
in rain falling on dry leaves,
like time in meter, chord
to arpeggio to chord.
Its terms are forest ashes and crystal,
scarlet persimmon and blood, the cave
and sun-lit chamber of winter, wind
across corn tassel and granite.
One might believe this contract
to be invisible, invisible where
the disappearing points of the urchin’s
spines appear as the motion
of the sea, where the shifting
reflection of the water willow
and the wavering shadow of the water
willow merge and part, where truth
and lie first draw together and link
from pre-death to presence.
Like anise-pleasure contained
in the seed-size dry fruits
of the fennel, so the binding
signature is contained in the agitation
of poplars taken by wind, in the sucker
tipped tube feet of the slender purple
starfish, in the release of midnight’s
cry by root cricket, by poaching owl.
Again and again, inside the purity
of tone in the ear of the mind
of the bell caster at his fire,
this signal tolling will continue
to repeat itself. Like the pause
of the winged ant stopped, extinct
and unbroken in rock amber, this contract
remains its own reiterated event
from coming to coming.
Here is my hand on it.
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