Winter Journal: Gold Rivulet Weave, Gauded
By Emily Wilson
chains of the willow, desolate weft
birds and the slim reprieves
the socketing together of weeds before water
straight-pins of jet
incontrovertible smears of dense cloud
against bullet-train whitenings, unleashed
the reductions to tense
the awful dozes into deep sinks
flush grows upward, secreting, soaking through
the old damasks
fretwork of trees, their balances achieved
then slipped off
touched-up surge of cloud across water
The river shuttles onward, reconstituting
It gains the red threads of taillights
the spare greens and the thousand paired whites
warping over, shaping off
The ducks come forth out of something unclear
The trees drain their weights into water
The ducks are a tension I have not known of
How they pivot, disfiguring the whole field
dragging their trapezoid blear
They are careful and meet their trains behind them like brides
Now the whistles of those taken to air
The disturbance of them in this river
and the wavering cardiographies
up-rushed, up-stayed
This is the push of all strayed things into night
the heavying of trees against sky-fire
stolen into a river, cloistered down
I do not want anything more than this taking
of last light into pocketings and loose garments
unbearable closets of the trees
the stitched-in bones and the placketings
This feeling of everything unhanded
suddenly let go into robes
The half-bustled willow rails forward
The still surface. The quieted surface.
The same sharp planets exacting there
Copyright Credit: Emily Wilson, “Winter Journal: Gold Rivulet Weave, Gauded” reprinted from The Keep. With permission Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001.
Source: The Keep (University of Iowa Press, 2001)