The Word Without Weight - Eric Maroney

She is looking for the mumbled word

Slit from the womb of voice

Speck of thought, wearing the clothes of thought

Shedding the garments of voice

While the body is stretched through time

And becomes the instrument of voice

Taken away from us

And you ask from the other room

“What did you say?”

Voices like tumbled stones

Still, they talk on

Grasping, twisting, the

Way of love is spoken

That men swallow their tongues

Swollen, hampered by speech

Seeking the other, but hiding, surprised,

This defense of aging men

Not much to say?

Make a friend of silence

Speak the sound

Say the word

This may be God

A sound of wind on this hill

In the dark upland

Say it, say this

The word without weight

The Larches Have Eyeballs

The Larches Have Eyeballs                              

High on their bowers

Single eyes, like Masonic symbols

Crown the trees, like a cherry

Or a bowler hat, their

Garments below shed like

A nightgown, and their needles

A carpet, reflect their eyes

Like fallen lashes and a scowl

A down turned brow of

An earth mumble to the trees

They climb, like Jacob’s angels

Up their own ziggurat, a procession of

Asterisks a smart line of commas

They see with the power of seers

The stark punctuation of the seasons

They inhale the sulphide fumes

Of their Delphi

Their eyeballs stand naked,

In the dim twilight snow

Highlighted in eyes