I woke with my hair standing up
like stick winter grass
craving rain.
I woke up with my hair staggering,
a forest of hibernating animals
tilting out of their lairs.
I woke with my hair clutching at sky
alongside she-wolves
hunting the moon.
I crawl from my cave of
bonestone stalactites
dripping dreams into dark pools.
My brainstone cavern where epitaphs
are written in glow-fire
tracks of blind worms.
Deep chamber of sorestone,
touchstone, bleedstone, bloodstone,
hollowstone.
My mouth is a weir below the falls
where hello is tangled with fishing line
and hooks.
My eyes will eat
from what jackals left behind
of dawn.
My ears hear the hours
sticky with sap
in truncheon jaws of beetles.
Long is the name of this hunger
in my body.
Long are the names of the earth.
For Shay’s Word Garden
qbit 
A powerful and very skillful piece, qbit, that combines the depths of the persona with the depths and hungers of nature to illustrate the grit and blood under the pretty flowers and stars. The opening similes about the hair are just the perfect hook, the beginning of the journey into “sorestone, touchstone, bleedstone..”… but then there are so many great lines in this–particularly “..My mouth is a weir below the falls…” where the simplest speech is full of fishhooks and strangling ‘lines’, followed by the lilting darkness of the close, which is sharp and unnerving and everything that poetry should be. (See my comment on the previous Levertov, and how the best poets know how to end their poems.) Just a gorgeous, stunning write that pushes the mind into thinking about the reality of the natural world and the cruelty of the choices it puts into everything around us, and our own very bones.
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I was hoping you would like this! (As I always do, but I thought of you in particular here.)
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Superb imagery, Q~
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Thank you!!
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Fantastic, from the first line to the last. Wow.
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Way!!!
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Some of your best wordplay, Randall. Heartfelt? Just asking for a friend.
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Thanks for the kind words!
Tell your friend I came by this poem honestly, but feel like I lost my way TBH. Yes, there was something heartfelt that I was trying to get out, but not what I think it could be. Putting this one on the “put aside and come back later” pile. Your friend has a keen eye, as always.
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