Mystic

“The air is a

mill of hooks”

—Sylvia Plath

Mystic

The sun used to bloom—

Like a geranium leaping

From the bed into a

Brand new day

The chimney used to—

Breathe in the morning

And the heart hadn’t

Stopped beating yet

I remember great love—

Oozing and leaking

From every molecule

Of my daily existence

But now there is only—

A humpback poet in

An unwashed cottage

Choked by clematis

North Tawton with—

Its St. Peters Church

A graveyard full of

Fetid wombs and flies

Beneath gaunt yews—

Leaning in the twilight

Smog creeps from traffic

Along Market Street

The hiss of tires—

In the rain, the strain

Of being used up each

Tight rodent-faced day

Spooks nibbling at—

The rotting façade of

An ancient cathedral

Full of the living dead

The lengthening shadows—

Amidst the gravestones

Where love and tenderness

Leave nothing to remember

There is no remedy—

No pieces leftover to even

Want to pick up and glue

Back together again

Here is where I buried—

Both of them back near

The cemetery’s stone wall

Under a dead yew tree

My turn to be mystic—

A shotgun in one hand

And a shovel in the other

Smiling beside still waters