Dan Beachy-Quick

The Chimes

the gold-gong-earth faith’s hammer struck

gnat’s wings & those saturn rings ringing out

in night & nightingale a song that thinks

a flute is this muse-tool and so is the comet

tuning the ear to the atoms and the horse’s tail

swatting flies from flinching haunches the buzz

that is either the humble-bees in the bluebells

or gossip of the mowers a mile down the road

chorus of the long war waged between dark oak

and darker pine :: pine cone’s cosmic whorl

as clock of the chronic hours those months

hidden inside minutes those mosquitos

misquoting the oracles impossible decree to know

yourself as the beetle knows the broad green

grape leaf it left in tatters the sun

unfolds its intricate lace on the ground & waits

for any bride to come :: for any bride to come

through the olive grove ignoring the doves

a plum in her hand & a leaf-not-yet-a-leaf

the unfurled tight green curl of the lowercase

letter b of the infant’s endless babble blowing

bubbles of spit into sea foam into love herself

pausing to remember what she forgot

the sun’s lucent veil on the ground :: on the ground

the deer’s two halves-of-the-moon cloven print

& the rough breathing of the letter h of the

hunter’s rapid rabbit-in-the-den heart’s fast fear

& the hound rapt at his master’s heel scents

the antler in the mind of this man not yet turned

into a stag :: a stag who saw the moon naked

in a pond and walked all night circling the edge

remembering the brightness of a bare breast

& the letter b eagerly studied and long discussed

though you failed the test on the letter a :: a

leaf of the aspen tree it tethered to the cosmos

by a spider’s thread the late september sun

lights up the moon’s omega over the mountains

I mean the flowers & the planets & the stars

The Oracles

Don’t wake her, it is her job to sleep.

Door-in-sun, moon-hut—

Collecting acorns in a dream.

Don’t stop her, it is her job to breathe

In the snow—

Snow I think of as mine, as a mine

Of slowness, cold time, the

Absolute zero of now’s middle letter

Found also in other ways: the letter I

Drawn back like a bow-string becomes

The letter o—small field

Of now, small field of snow

Wherein a goat bleats and history

Goes cold. That fever

Is her job, don’t—. Don’t interfere.

The gods alter fear into heat, weird

fate, a molecule in a star vibrates strangely

outside the star, liar time

pulses as if, as if, as if it was a heart.

It is not say the oracles. Time

Is no, has no, heart.

What the ear hears in the intricate

Hours’ discarded conch

Shell is a kind of unspeaking thou 

Shall or shall not—. Blood-heat

Does better than thought does think—

Sinters the ruinous dust

Once again into a world though each

World has its woe. Has its feathers. Its

Arrows. Its infinite

Althoughs. Although I speak in the common

Tenses, I know—. As you know—.

Did, does, will do—. Wisdom says

All words are one word not one word of which

I’m saying. Don’t touch me. 

How is this skin more than a god?