Ruth and Rose

...Hand of hand
Whose strikings, steeled and scored,
render a sweep pledged of return, gathered of glow.

Choired tongues that pace my days,
image reality to rear retort of ignorance and echo.

Stillness gouged of the cyclic staves of age

shores light's spread turned of its lacking.
Tethered to memory and pardon,
sound, once loath to noise neath our harvest,
Psalms now the siblings' unstitch.

Calm wife, whither and wherefore shall your godship stretch?

Devoured of brisance,
the ivory hours, that illumed once the flesh of your earned curvature,
settle, keyed of breath and the perils of flight...

As I, foundress, of helms, sleepless, ceaseless
Of what feeds each
past puissance of sway to gentle descent,
Furnish doubt and preclusion of all pence

To mount life of vested hymnary
To freely relearn the episodes, the gestures
of strangers, their sleights, their sleeves...

Arrangement sheds the feigning of shape
As I fall my thoughts to you and
upon their artifice
the visible sings if to only remember.

Ash of pride and hymen
I behold, kneeling the unearthed keep of praise:

Graced palms, absent of feeling
graze the diphthong of our union.

Having nourished the every limit and rise,
Need of needs,
Ever unseen,
I carry your return

Tholing asides as my chilled hands rescind their reign.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster