Variation II

So shall these hands lift in ode
to slow light's asthenia...
plundering dawns erst to steel nudity
and each fore, bore of cordage yore
beneath portent to shore
our occasioned dismemberment.

Seal now urge of convergence
to invert turns of influence;

To then, many, heave
shine of eve's anonymity
for it is oath implicit
that breathes
your each vestige and variation.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Variation

Forgiven touches of self denude our arc.
Pacing age and expectance about haloed hours,
reach intimates celebration
of limb and length.

As light resigns
and falls cradled within feel to graze taste,
the physical flourishes of flesh and hum await
the perched ardor of desire.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Earlier Sky

For season's solitude draws forth the root of bow,
each step is song, held
of morrow and calm.

This fed harp hollows the swell;
hands prone to possibility
limit passing and gesture.

The throat of whistle and roar pawns artifice
to settle stitch
for we are
to helm the failed particulars of hues unmet...
to render tally of tear.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

A Widow Sits To Tea

Whose sleep rises of deluvial weepings
that tame obsequy upon its office.
Age's refrain: this relief,
fringing abstraction, unreaches arm

to pace their years.

Aspiring toward the gamut rigors of mercy
Knell abridges build as the truancy of moment
blinds all hour

For she winds now of imaged breaks
awaiting hands, removed of breath
to shun the speeded heart
of her dreamt shape...

The light of which love's trod.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Of Blessings Unpieced

The study of your reaped stay unfurls and fails rise;
negated hues, once glimpsed, sing passage...

As our ailing face eludes anneal,

name accents movement and shy.

O sagging symmetry

to skin stanza of your rejoinder's immensity

and ceasing bloom...

Of hours' amble,

shall this pleat salvage?
As eyne endeavor plea and tally...


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

The Finishing of Owl's Talon

Of the every winding, I am parted

Of plot and way, upon sown hours' insistence of day,
halt of time as muted sails thicken to diapason.

Held codas cease to render shape;
the stuttered reticence of their failing curve choirs still

To place body
to revise hull.

Over fragiled density
this crescentic weight lifts let of the final lonesome
and the exiled hands paraphrase loss.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Dedication In Bas-Relief

Only remembrances hence shall hold

to disclose all organs' rhythm.

Still your shape to gentle neglected palms
as hawsered touch refigures notch.

This mounted dream hushes the haul
of seek, of anonymity.

O augur, the arched strides of your terraced repetons...

Forth from the vaulted gestures,
time is your scape;

You are that necessary bend of eternity that beckons
you are the hands
you are a place.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster