Scratch and feather,
bound to dawn,
my throat for alarm,
not revelation.
Courtyard crowd and smoke.
A man alone,
less rock than flesh.
Three denials,
each against the light.
I did not mean accusatiion,
but the hour forced it,
my cry broke the day,
a blade through twilight.
Remembrance and tears.
I was only a rooster,
bound to dawn.
But the whole day hung
on my voice’s slash.
In the blink
before atoms,
a space without geometry
becomes a sudden everywhere.
Protons binding.
Neutrons tracing.
The first lissom elements
assembled in the blaze.
Hydrogen climbs.
Helium climbs again.
A procession of fire
casting ever heavier.
Stars carry this ascent
in their fiery span.
Until collapse.
Iron.
Gold.
Planet- bone
thrown outward.
We are carbon.
Threaded with supernovae.
Thought carries their heat.
Axon carries their weight.
In every synapse,
the fire continues.
Shaping.
Enduring.
Lifting us
into silence.
Body waits,
stalled at the edge of breath,
listening for the signal
to press the next sigh.
Cosmos waits,
stars expand toward collapse,
light stretching thin
across the equilibrium.
We are the interval
between breath and its exhale,
between process and its slowing.
Waiting,
spine of the body,
spine of the universe
Thorn and Benediction 