[morning green through ivy] Poem by Dan Beachy-Quick

morning green through ivy
leaves resuscitated
on window let us also breathe
our own breath and


the birds their blood in arrows
settle into nest from migration
the cloud of their song woke
me // stormed in me // a waterfall
in the thrush's call // a star flick
ering in the sparrows


we are not the woods if we
whisper the woods
quietly to ourselves we
witness our hands
walking into the forest we are
two rooms who think


alone // unless


my ear saw the cardinal my eye
heard the scarlet
tanager I could not
show it to you yesterday
it existed as I exist
now to you or the water pipit
bobbing at burble of creek to one
musical strand it heard and was
harmony of and I
saw from my distance


the web we step through to enter
woods:


spider sews one point to branch
and leaps where wind carries
sews one point of silk to fern
and leaps to where wind carries
until the web in logic


sees the plank in pine
do you see the house already built
the oak desk I think at the dark
cherry night
stand for your closed book
by the bed we keep a light to turn off
do you hear our whole house
swaying in the wind those birds
are not crying out in fear
those birds are singing nuptials
outside our house already built
in the green canopy the quoin of air


illumined always as it illumines
let us be truer
fact asleep below love a-leap // no
cornerstone no
cement save song do you
hear above us the river strong
in leaves the rubble
wind flows over and is not wind
river the rubblesource the river
ripples over to sing


us and the silken nest
weighs the beech branch down
in horror the multi
tude breathing in a single
lung and one


cocoon countless in turns
the transparent ever
winging itself past hunger
glows as we
glow is woven of one single
thread and no


love thinks separate
the weaver from the wing


I say now I love you
with the worm in my mouth
spinning my words
into your ear and your listening
volumes pupa
in the elm's crotch and oak knot
do you hear as I hear
the old sins blossom from diaries
and become the faith leaves
live upon we eat not ink
but the light that burns in the blank
page so ink can more unselfish sing
so the wounded deer leaps highest


so heart quickens



my hand cocooned in your hand
to become each one
half a wing of luna
moth waiting in woods for night's
blossom the moon


in borrowed light


through dark unfathomed the dead
star's light still lights on leaf a
finite edge we
loathe the bounded and nowhere


witness a cosmos in fetters


the woods lit by the lantern
blown out our eyes
by bright stars no longer


thinking love is bright


our woods and us
some star's thought so the wild
iris angles up in sun
so sun is all
stars and us the worm
whose hunger sated in leaf again
becomes hunger insatiable


not for fact // this world in which


nothing in the eye the instant dead
stars cast out countless shrouds


morning's bright pall // Venus ascends


ceaseless and wary


the weak light one upon the other throws


each moon waxing to each moon
of the other's face in full


caught
not in gazing
at light


we are what light gazes on


lumen ensouling love
so sigh so spiders feast by night
so whippoorwills cry "poor
will" so bobolinks wear the morning
sun behind their heads unseen
so light divides in two the star
light sprang from and sews together
again that star in us your sweet moan
moon your linger languor your
tongue on your lips not to speak so
the moon glows on your lips in me
the jack in pulpit blooms by night
so I bloom so I give me to you
so the appletree in flower proves
not fruit but the sun


in the mouth of the worm
who grammars these woods
into this world whose song is