Friday the thirteenth of a winter that didn't arrive
Covering each bead of sand,
Slithering through the carved maze on the ground,
the brand embedded deep in the flesh
that glows in the sun like the marbles of a pale-skinned mansion
Is the white.
***
I take up a mouthful
of what tastes like the blood of ten thousand and ninety eight willows.
What binds the heavens and earth together in this forsaken morning
right at the seam of the horizon
Is the white.
***
The sultry white stays with the land
Through the sun and through the clouds
whatever comes between the white and its lover,
The white and the snakes on its shoulders,
Is doomed to end
All the things that might grow
All the things that may stand.
***
Except for the sharp burn of the mighty tree
that bends the earth in its shape
The wood that feeds from where lilies were buried
The wood that drinks up the glory poured from above.
The white, coiled and brighter than ever
kisses every sand grain in its way
Nothing can eat up the slippery white,
Nothing
but the Tamarisk.
