- Vol. 10
- Chapter 03
An Eiderwork of Shadow Spun
as tall towers to steel frames – shells that swallow spirits whole –
as soft fabric to idleness whittled skin – saddles for straw backs –
as spurred leather boots to moccasins worn, winter-dark, to save
ethics as aesthetics, or a riffed refrain on the same lines of banality
we spend to reassure ourselves that plenty is not enough –
leather bindings for blackly bound mouths show our love for silence –
as lance and spear pinion flesh to a wood-bound existence that incites,
in us, a reminder of the hallowed sallow dark in which we move –
a sharp cutting point, but no escape – we fumble in shadow, down
from where the eider-spun-to-encasing-fabric-bone told truthfully
only of our glutting, down to the road many before us walked
– a crumbling admixture of gravel and once sure steps slipping,
caught in the dragon’s teeth we built to ward off the surety
of ageing – and, in a fit of ever-rising kenning – whispers,
and an assurance to Althing – a multiplicity inside us,
wrought only of ourselves – we, knowingly look up and watch
the assurance of the life we led distend, from hallowed honey
to gum-bitten blood swilled back like mouthwash by survivors
playing house in the remnant of a mechanized horse –
but the ashes aren’t bitter when you’re hungry – black bread,
and weeds, gathered in the moonlight on the sea-battered coast,
the waterwine that fuels the wordwine that sates the senses,
damned always in a search for der kennungsverlossigheit,
for the meaning lost, for an identity lost, and for ourselves lost –
and we fall, in increments, until our technicolour vision
is split – all eight of the spider’s eyes see then for us a composite
of want – yet it is in the strings-plucked cajoling emptiness –
it that unspools hope like needlework by lamplight –
An Eiderwork of Shadow Spun
that we can shatter heat in a high cabriole of our making,
that, anew and gutterbound, there exists a furnace to fire song,
and so it is, in the bleary muck, that we may choose,
again, again, always again, again, again, always again,
to sing loudly of our tales spun deeply in the yarrowstalk,
and to sing to ourselves a melody of new fortune,
and so it is I choose the music that makes us
I choose it as my companion in the dark.