Overland (New, sort of) by JKD

This is a new rewords, but in fact it is after “drafts from Winter Constellations” by Nate Pritts, which was published in Horse Less Review #2, available directly on their site at: http://www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/pritts.html

Over the wind-tossed grasses
I adhere:
...............a triangular pattern’s
crystalline force your eyes—

cobalt blue irises folding in clatters
& here ...........................close

matter’s great deal of the world
exchanged
.............smoke-chased dark wick, flame.

*
But always ice-angles in
snow—
.........the winding path offers,
perhaps, a clue to the equation:

constants reflected under lake water.

We allow our deceptions openings
Arches allow doors light

*
a pattern
............of stars so close
we tried to hold back vivid
displacements,

........................stone-shifts
bodies of what one into another became:

glass, spiked, windblown, afternoon.
Once, traveling with a woman:

*
sporadic discoloration of clustered
star-formations all within the trace of
her glazed spice after-mulling
slice of an expression,
window-glint

*
early sun moonlight
you reflected through
a rage

for some defining order rusted

muscle trying to hold
the burning of fire, & then afterward.

To appear, farther along long distances
between the fallen

Bodies rolling in sleep, colder, until then

*
loved
You pointed out the night’s retching,
reach
skeletal arms over the wind-tossed grasses.

Staggered & jagged sickness we keep unchecked,
like this you

her, my, our hands, hips, lips
don’t matter a bit, boulders, jagged cliffs, flint

all through

until you looked like

*
Silent folds
to itself whispers as white rustles slip
closed
.......to hold
..................all this
...........................banknotes, poems, birch

trees standing to our waists
in the gusting wind, the bluff
of moonlight
.....................closed like eyes

We allow ourselves some small deceptions:
Snowfall closed off