A boat of light

She gave me water she gave me a cup

Of wormy dirt she gave me the movement
Of thunder without guile

The corpse the fable the innocent

Dark earth crossed & re-crossed

& my own words
Returned to me then like my face reflected

Cleanly in a pool of still blood.

I had my answer

Yet I was by some secret
Order inspired to continue

To think

To read the moral contours of the dream

I had been given & for which I had
Not asked.

She gave me words she gave

Me unsustainable receptive

Loss if only
Of chaos flayed open delicate

Nervalian flower the grasses

Repeating back

To me each of my
Ill-chosen wishes.

What I observe you shall

Observe

From afar or from infinite-
ly deep inside

My ocular orbit you shall

Observe the world which is not

Yet destroyed & then
With excruciating precision its first

& most delicate fatal cracks.

She gave me brambles she gave me

Stones the color of milk
& all the wildness of paradox its un-

dulant light like a school of writhing minnows

Or like the echo

Of sunlight
On the eyelids

In the instant of one’s death,

Or the melody

Which is molecular
& haunts

Of our daylight

In the cooling air’s

Dictation,
More than wind.

She gave me music she gave me

Petals to adorn my beard stiff

With human oils,
I who had for centuries sat

At the center of a meadow in the arms

Of its soft & unforgiving breeze.

For is not the soul
In its thickness

Of misdeeds

Like a foam of moon-

lit saliva, an immensity
Of effulgent crystal,

A boat of light?

She gave me seriousness she gave me

A phalanx of stone
Cathedrals, she gave me a lesson in

Familiar particles the bleary

Arms made gigantic by

The name she gives herself,
Oh happy un-

happy, to let the void

Incline toward our

Preservation
As far as we

& the fates would be

Moon-like, voluminous

Sundry & concealed
In her hair

—

From Issue 12 of Afternoon Visitor

—

Michael Joseph Walsh is the author of A Season
(University of Georgia Press, forthcoming), winner
of the Georgia Poetry Prize, and Innocence (CSU
Poetry Center, 2022), winner of the Lighthouse
Poetry Series. He is co-editor of APARTMENT Poetry,
and his poems, reviews, and translations have appeared
in the Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM,
Guernica, FENCE, jubilat, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia.