One can hear the hair of the dead grow — Sy Hoahwah
One silver hair, glides mercurially over algae crusted stones, one dead hair,
a slight glister among the inlets, spoken as splashes, spread like unsound hair.
Confessions reaped from the old ear, fainter—moving ash as holy wind
to map blood’s divisions, two streams channel to four streams, deathbed hair.
Above, balanced on some hovered limb, an empty eggshell, a hurried mock.
Speckled feathers twist in a brittle wind, spool-nest tools, through threaded hair.
Blush-dipped earth, your lawful hands slip out, impatient to trace and find
the trellis pattern of Christ’s spine: the softer rock, answers from Godhead hair.
Forgone groundwater comes up for knowledge—a chimera of remainders.
Strands of grafted blood like tributaries, always to return ahead like stead hair.
Here is the breath—air rage in the two coves; here it is held when the sun
makes warmth, kneel and pray; here is your instrument, your nail—shed hair.
Guide yourself with a knotted wrist, watch whirlpools as you tap each rib,
draw on the meanders of your bones for your source—the silver hair, bled hair
Song-riffles under branchflows, the silver hair curves down its cold sky,
This Riparian zone: the water goes, the patter, the silver hair, the still-fled hair.
What will be done with the clear water? What is sung with the ground? On by,
you track the river puzzle with a mouth full of ancient, silver, and unseeded hair.