t.e.n.

Another poem. This time about how my brain doesn’t work. And ancient Russian dead languages.

t.e.n.

 God’s arrow, ten is your name
This arrow is God’s own
The God directs judgment.
                        Birch Bark Letter No. 292

 

I will walk overland from Olonets

I’ll go to the shores of Onega

Birch bark message in hand

Dash my knuckles on the blushed granite

Slip silent on the water to the shore

Of an island where the sweet scent of larch oil clings to breaths of fog.

 

This arrow

It has a name now and is owned.

Controlled.

Electric and yet so human

dashing roughshod through our skies our clouds our limbs our brains.

This arrow fells trees, men.

All that remains is a blackened hole

burn-rotting the core of a massive spruce

smudging out fractions of memories, moments.

To assign a name to the nameless

is to pin it down.

Limit.

This arrow needs a limit.

And I, a tree with no scars.

 

Destruction of the tangible is its own horror.

Horror has a place in nature.

It is the devastation of what we cannot see or prove

what we only feel

that is true havoc, true madness.

True madness must be contained.

 

I will walk overland from Olonets to Onega

tell the islands

tell the shoreline

all the way to Medvezhyegorsk.

Deliver the Charter Letter –

confine with a name so that I may be set free.

 

12.22.10