Feasts of the Calendar Year
Bronwen Tate

Icons follow over arch

of door of wings.

                           Events lead to events.

More modern varnish. Your solemn

                     overarching.

 

 

I

On the table different instruments.

 

Embrace under canopy

your moment of travail.

 

We will not address you again.

 

 

II

Not beeswax he swallowed.

 

A heavier lifting,

domed rejoinder.

 

Hope your mother meant it.

 

 

III

Does she hesitate in giving?

 

A hand could flutter

if imperfect.

 

See her already up the stairs.

 

 

IV

More of a crowd than I would allow.

 

All the gesturing

sprigs point to season.

 

Wash the painful possibility.

 

 

V

Burnished symmetry and unequal fishes.

 

Submission hovers,

a hand nears touch.

 

Mystery may come still into water.

 

 

VI

After so much waiting, recognition, spark.

 

A voice coming

forth out of rust.

 

Depart in peace our tired dismissal.

 

 

VII

If we count back as we have the habit.

 

Assent is a lily,

a breath.

 

Already quickening under the folds.

 

 

VIII

Branch underfoot a leaf, your coat.

 

Eye, a gate,

needle, a kneeling camel.

 

Celebration as deliberate blinders.

 

 

IX

Who is looking up, and if not up, where?

 

Disciples,

your flimsy sandals.

 

All the lands and seas still to go.

 

 

X

When touched the tongue or the ear.

 

Stop in the street

to understand.

 

The sudden flame of it.

 

 

XI

Hurled from the rocks by force of vision.

 

If follow

was not clear.

 

Hide your face from what is.

 

 

XII

Is sleep an assumption?

 

Strange separation,

small, lifted away.

 

And they left staring at what is not.