“To Hold”

To Hold
—after Gwynn Murrill’s “Hawk on Wood Branch,” 1984 

1.

Curly grain
reddened beneath figure
dapple as turning day
through canopy

in local tellings
Hawk, no starved minion
is morning itself.

2.

Soar above to look
down over so many blocks
of wood & see form

a single
unsprung forest
cut, cast
afloat otherwise ocean.

3.

Poised at odds with
ravenous evening
on the lone
branch of the world

enrapture hatches
all shape

of severances
where audience

focused on affect
& shadow alike
affixes another
fathoming frame.

4.

Onlookers, descendents
continue to dive.
Wildly retrieve
lost continents.

Unfold
like ruptured
islands thin

reality unsheathes, even
as those woods’ mountain’s waters
below return.

***

Jeremy Casabella teaches English and writes poetry, short stories, and pwoermds in Bakersfield, California.  His most recent poems appear in The Invisible Bear, Eclipse, Shot Glass, Route 7, The Ekphrastic Review, Vinyl, and The American Journal of Poetry.  His pwoermding is featured in the anthology The Wisdoms of the Universes in a Single String of Letters from Xexoxial Editions.