Wonderstruck in the Bladderwrack
written by: Bruce McRae
The uncountable nights and sunrises.
In a town without clocks,
without bedrooms and people sleeping fitfully.
In a world of cinnamon and celery.
A country under a flagstone marker.
This continent risen from the sea,
as if a Titan destroying morning.
***
I can’t remember much about death.
Whether going room to room or stood quite still.
Whether adrift on a sea of moments
or in the undertow of the Black Sea’s ebb,
I don’t remember life or living.
***
Your arm and chin are mostly water.
Your skull plates are comprised of milky chalk.
The bones in your hand are a box of matches.
Every molecule contains the Devil’s chronicles.
A single breath is an ancient empire
and you’re that bird in a window singing.
In a cage of pearl and silver.
In a house that’s not a home.
***
At the gates of the eternal present.
Now being a structure and a reckoning.
Now being a tale of the air.
And so we pray to a falling star,
in every prayer a question mark.
A question like a crescent moon,
the moon both scythe and sickle.
Threaded with the punctuation
of calmed composure.
***
The moon is ripe for contrition.
It leads me unto myself, a poet-mendicant.
It fills my glass with Jurassic waters.
‘A brazen-cheeked and shabby fellow’,
the moon has measured us for mourning.
In my sleep I’m always kneeling,
the moon’s woolen god displeased withal.
A spectral sore, it won’t stop seeping.
***
After seven weeks of Sundays
I’ve become what I am not.
A dust speck on a methane planet.
A crack in a bowl in a cabinet.
Coyote-yip inside a rusted can.
I am nightfall in the parish of the lost.
Once boy-young, I am
a bastion of blithe indifference.
***
The war between the wars between the wars…
When a bullet fired in Passchendaele
has yet to arrive at its destination.
Xeno’s arrow being strung at Agincourt.
The atom bomb that continues exploding,
forever more or less a word.
When the wounded crawled under a wire
to return to their sleep on Earth.
Mud unto mud. Blood unto ashes.
***
Killjoy. Leechcraft. Picayune.
Some words just grab my fancy.
Like ragtag, bellicose and scram.
That hinny and jenny are types of donkeys.
***
Your argument is a road washed out.
A stream, it begins in the snow-laced mountains,
winding towards an eventual sea.
Your argument is a forest in winter.
It’s the reason angels cry and puppies whimper.
Your mouth is a tower of confusion
and we’re its outraged daughters
and sons of simpletons.
Everything you’ve tried to tell us
is a town without houses.
***
When whetting the baby’s head count your blessings.
Apply the soul-oil liberally.
Spin three times west and spit into a sleeve’s cuff.
Cross your heart and hope to die.
Listen, if holy water gets into the baby’s eyes
the little dear will suffer visions.
If I should die before I wake
the baby represents a green awakening.
We must continue living.
- Wonderstruck in the Bladderwrack - July 29, 2021
