Into

Into the artery of the neck that feeds the myelin  
Into the frost at the pillars of creation 
Into the energy from the stonework bubbling up from the spire
The empty egg at the palm of wisdom 
Into the condemned score above the lintel 
The population of fish that rummages for lice at the benthos 
Into the broken husk strewn across the mead
Into the privacy of the thief 
And the almond of grief in the heart of the heretic 

Into the dead caryatid nursed by the animal at the water’s edge
And the gold band lost in the forest 
The lamppost on the nightstand next to the dreaming child
The filigree of the trampled ribbon 
Into the oar in the hand that calls out to the riverbank  
Into the trees that shade the bank
And the creases in the middle of the folded tinsel 
The pigment on the face the seaman dreams of 
The salt grain on the dragonfly’s porous wing
The wind blowing through the high roots of the beech tree
Or the follicles that oversee the brain  
Into the window against which the storm moves 
The fever that swims into the cheeks from the edges of the face

And into the cliff house borne into the horizon by fog
The skulls in the wall between the adversary 
The vibrant spool out of which the damask is spun 
Into the worn hands of the carver preparing the instrument 
The firm slime of the tunnel
Into the violence waiting in darkness in the valley 
The harmony of the choir
The extermination of the organ 
The moving electricity of the reed instrument   
The sacred room for which the hive is made 
Or the grub worm eating across the mildews of the earth 
The orchestra that governs the onslaught at dawn
The secret thread in the long tapestry of waves   
Into the palavers in back rooms of the penitentiary 
The loneliest molecules waiting for another billion years 
     to walk erect across the wilderness 
Into the story at the beginning of the midrib 
And the blackness sitting at the edge of light
Into the green that lives behind the face in the hood 

So into the powder alive at the bones disembodied 
The grafts therein that store webs throughout the calcium 
The latch holding these centuries
Into the eyes in the socket of the slain head returned to dust
In the mouth of the white spider open 
The rib cage smoldering on the scree 
The poverty of old age hungry and rotten 
The hunter sitting before the fire atop the mountain 
And the corridor where darkness retreats behind the maze 
       of shadow  

Into crimson into blackness and dusk
The blue of the sky 
The wider fires at the end of the sands 
The estuary behind the rainbow 
Into the violent end for the heliotrope 
Into the ancient heliograph smeared across the stone 

Into the severity of the tyrant 
And the infant of the tyrant wheeled about the kingdom hated 
Into the body of the martyr 
The stomach by the acids therein 
That self who blesses and cries words at night 
The tree on the mountain off which it grows 
The sun it consumes before and above and behind 
Into the sun also 
Into every living thing bearing the mystery 
Into me and by me that I might live by it