HYMN

After Michaelmas we didn't dare eat blackberries. It was
     Autumn: braided reeds and black-watch plaid blended
     with the waxy smell of bock crayons the stars covered
     with tinfoil.

We did not sing the prayer out-loud, for fear of summoning an
     angel with wings of fire and eyes of flame. He would
     stand there, taller and brighter than oak trees and gold-
     leaf, confirming our small error with a calm voice,
     'where's the dragon?'




NORTH

I
Left Behind

For iron separation,
Atlantic is the wilder,
but my Pacific is treacherous always,
with something rapidly knocking-
the wave curl of physics
heard deliberately,
but having left the West, I think of houses
and measure the villages that were Greenland.

Vikings embroidered
the pavement around Trinity
with iron and stone.
I photograph artefacts found:

something flashing along the thin crust of ice
along the edge of a stream,
or fragments of a ship's tongue
that learned a taste for salt.

II
Baldor's Legs

An earth, there iron Thor,
Oden from eternal,
red, the map,
hard-headed, the rainbow.

Loki's cunning peace:
keeping it
hatched lights that
don't flicker enough-

Anglo-Saxon, and the
ready snake syllables,
hoards of music
in loud trusting choirs.

Driving through yellow foliage,
fruit and waterfalls,
every pendulous feeling,
your memory returning.

III
Rusting Words

A tower intrudes
upon the earth
with always and breathing.
He faces the direction

where we watched
some saint's well,
drenching waves,
the heaving curl,

steam off ruins
as organic as trees,
and at the root,
your rusting tools.

Let my pen measure
what is foreign:
you and an other
and the blended earth.




Bronwen Tate grew up in Portland, Oregon, which partially explains her love of rain. She now lives in domestic bliss with her little sister in Providence, RI where she devotes her time to writing to-do lists and consuming record amounts of tea. She has been known to get the top off a hot water bottle using pliers.



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