The Circle

Brian Henderson
From:   Smoking Mirror. ECW, 1990.

I am a stone knife in a bundle. You carry me on your back from place to place. Like the night, it is a medicine bundle that harbours and portends. When I rise I raze cities, trail comets of underworld B the night heaven B through the noose of the dawn. I breed boneseed in the humid caves from which you, who look into this smoking mirror, will one day arise like corn. Bright gold spun in the blackness, I shake you out of the night heaven like stars, words in this dreambook. I carry you in my mouth until you rush the blade int the sheath of my heart land you name me. You have hurled me into this story, I now I write you in blood, so that the story might be prolonged, and not end here with us. So that you might carry me from place to place, hear the bell-bird and the mocking-bird, watch the lemon-stained sky, the gold shield of water through the darkening clatter of palm fronds. But nothing, we know, is guaranteed. Only that the sun is also a doomed light-bearer. We are borne aloft like serpent banners by the always vanishing trail of blood.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Brian Henderson's works copyright © to the author.