LETTERS
TO MY WITCH
Elk come apart: and could sit in the great hand
Of pine roots let go
Of the earth, in their lax dissolution out of
That marriage: and toe
The gravel slid footloose by tons in each gorge
Where rock steeple and dome
Soar in witless dismemberment. All lie becalmed,
Unleagued, and at home:
But what sinew or unearthly rootbind
is
on us,
What
is
our iron
Of halves out of wedlock at groan to cleave,
More apart, more malign?
3. BEDROCK
I went into the haunch of the forest, tangled in root scrawl,
In log reach and fern snare,
And stood in the manna of leperheart toadstools: but lodes,
Unmined, I heard call
In the floor of decay, and I came to the backbone reef
Of bedrock. I went up
In the desert of rocks above timber to wait out of woodrot
And hearsay of leaf,
Where boulderfield rockbrawl of whaleback tombslab on tombslab
Of
mo~ntainhead
doombreak
Swarmed to my hips: and I heard on each rockface the lichen
Unpeel like a scab,
But beneath the big golgotha crawl felt the monolith pull
Of the bedrock. I went down
In the belly of gorges by cataract rockfall and fir ledge
Under headrock and skull
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