Three Days Before The Pipes Broke - A Poem Beginning With A Line By Nathaniel Mackey To Begin And To End Poem by Warren Falcon

for Rekiah



'ankledeep in damage

though she

dances...'


three days

before the

pipes broke-since

from frozen

a'toilet I sat

read the castings tea leaves an old
constipated sage squozen scrieing
fallen oracle bones and fur - spiders
too what butoh walk leg by leg by
leg by leg by leg by leg to what purpose
there on the plasticine stall floor/
wall not sure but am sure that the
dead flies of winter go uneaten/unsucked

Spider first days here I spoke to every morning
from the john me wondering at its slow slow
movements for 3 days till 4th its legs all curled
tucked tightly beneath its carapace I blow at it
from the cold seat - bunched draws round my
colder ankles it budges not at all I realize it is
deceased legs uniformly creased a beauty to
see first time ever've felt remorse for a bug a
spider and once cleaned flushed

my pajamas
up I gently

lift Spider up with toilet paper so soft
double ply-ed solomnly march spider on
bier so soft softly into still harder winter
snow and darker woods Middle-March flip
flops no socks slow going find a rock up
near the woodshed so place Spider there
with oddest prayer ever in my life but Lord
Buddha helps re: "all sentient beings"
etcetera etcetera que sera OK and

so perform brief bone chill rites then slide down
the path patch to my ground floor entrance to hot
shower then to Hopkins' poem - The Windhover
the more meaningful than ever for its

"dappled-dawn-drawn" things or rather
substituted or addendum-ed pray ponder

"threaded-sewn-moaned' things strangely
mourned actual tears born no doubt of projections
upon small cringes majestically formed objectively
perceived from secret and sightless spaces suspended
cocooned in darkness or once in close woods strung
pearled between limbs and trunks ferns which freakt
my face when August-last stumbled in marsh's humid
stagger thickets face-first into a massive web the sudden

grand mal-like seizure-like slaps scrape-face-eyelids
forehead-pate monstrous poison fears from not so
small a miracle maker webber's tales spun of/from its
self from within to without such sacred spun tattle-rattle
faint click no ears human to hear little feet tight walking
filament filligrees faint thin but so very there in air

"A first unfallen church it might have been."1

***

1- a line of Nathaniel Mackey's
from his "Song of the Andoumboulo