in a divine stillness

all such things lie
swallowed
in this
grey eye of lake,
all Narcissus’s thirst
slaked, shivering
blankly, bleakly,
winking lifelessly
awake,
sinking softly, sinking subtly, sinking stony beneath the calm,
my body floating down, soul trailing silently along . . .
the tree’s crackle
and gentle murmur
like a caress of the dying;
wind’s bitter ballads
against the water
an elegy for nothing;
crescent’s
madonna sorrows draped
in tears of mourning light;
deadwood’s drift as hollow
as devastating
as Ophelia’s stilled-life.
take me now. I am ready.
—
unravelling

fate falls
stone-handed,
an executioner’s axe, with
dreamlike indifference,
and yet
the weight of Atlas. drinking in
with blind eyes
a darkness swirling-wine,
I drift strange into
my somnambulism, dissociate a
gauzy haze,
cold fire
bursting forth
from these
chromium
veins.

by noah rymer