A Line Through October
from "A Line Through October"
what binds the day
to belief, what binds
belief to perception,
at the seam
between seasons
when words blur, phrases
warp, the sentence
surrounding us dissolves
*
candles voice
evening, these
shadows phrased
across the wall,
this exile,
in the cell where
I breathe
myself blank
*
other echoes inhabit
the alley, summer’s alley,
enclosed now by October’s
gloaming, the bled sky
gaping above
lopsided sheds
sheathed in yellow
hollowing orange
*
from a caved-in
photocopy shop
sparrows cast a crooked line
on their way to invoke
other omens—
a month of omens
looming
in each color-ticked margin
The image of sparrows “cast[ing] a crooked line on their way to invoke other omens” is particularly evocative. Idk why, but the image —and it could be because of the spooky season—conjures up something called a Witch’s Ladder: a knotted rope often runged with the dark feathers of crows, sparrows or such. Some darker thread than the red thread of salvation, the shadow-thread of which, the “crooked line”—I can see in my mind’s eye the bird-shadows each like a knot in a rope.
Thanks JM. Love it when you find the intersection of beauty and danger.