Thorn and Benediction

Poetry

Recent

  • The Serpent’s Orbit (chant)

    I. Approach
    Coil of night.
    Coil of sleep.
    Star-fields keep
    their hush.

    ☆

    II. Revolution
    Not falling.
    Not rising.
    Just the slow
    unbroken
    circling.

    ☆

    III. Memory of Stone
    Deep core remembers.
    Deep core holds.
    Heat folds.
    Rock turns.
    Names burn.
    You remain.

    ☆

    IV. Voice Without Breath
    No word.
    No tongue.
    Only the curve
    the curve
    the curve
    repeating.

    ☆

    V. The Long Spiral
    Around the ages.
    Around the dark.
    Around the light.
    Around the spark.
    Around nothing.

    Around
    On.
    On.

    ☆

    VI. Gravitation
    Your law is quiet.
    Your touch is slow.
    We move
    because you move.
    We turn
    because you turn.

    ☆

    VII. Witness
    Stars flare.
    Stars fade.
    Worlds rise.
    Worlds fall.
    You are the part
    that does not call
    attention
    to itself.

    ☆

    VIII. The Serpent Speaks Once
    I am orbit.
    I am return.
    I am the shape
    the void must learn.

    ☆

    IX. Return
    Coil of night.
    Coil of breath.
    We pace your path
    even in death.

  • Crucifix

    Before the seed, no root, no clay,
    No carbon ash, no light to sway
    Only the drift where atoms lay.

    Then tremor gathered dust to stem;
    A mineral will assembled then,
    A lattice waiting for its gem.

    Moisture entered, veins began,
    Green circuits forming under span,
    Slow calculus of earth and man.

    The bark grew coarse, the resin bled,
    Each ring inscribed what time had said,
    Compression training living dead.

    An axe was drawn. The fibres split.
    The scent of sap, the grain’s last writ
    A monument to yielding wit.

    They joined the beams. The metal tore.
    The wood absorbed what iron bore,
    And knew the weight of death’s cold law.

    Now centuries decay the frame;
    Sand covers splinter, nail, and name,
    The elements resume their claim.

    All fibres bend, all bindings break.
    The sap returns to stone and flake.
    In salvation’s wake
    The void will take.

    The void will take.

  • Gradients

    Entropy Gradient

    Matter disperses, undone chain,
    Sequential loss of stored domain,
    A silence without name remains.

    The fields relinquish ordered trace;
    No force petitions for its place
    All vectors thin into the base.

    Coherence wanes. The structures part.
    No pulse is kept, no core, no heart.
    The frame dissolves to dust of art.

    No witness stands to mark decline;
    No boundary guards the final line.
    Diminishment is by design.

    What glowed will dull, then cease to be.
    What moved will stay for entropy.
    No remnant seeks identity.

    Even the stars, in measured hour,
    Release the heat that once was power,
    And fall through gradients that devour.

    There is no rest. No final keep.
    No secret light the eye to reap.
    The void is deep.

    The void is deep.

    Mind Gradient

    The thought once held with steady care
    Now shifts as vapour in the air,
    No trace to prove it lingered there.

    Affections cool by slow degree;
    What felt essential ceases to be
    Not torn away, but now set free.

    No break announces when it ends;
    The shape erodes, the contour bends
    In absence quietly contends.

    No vow is shattered in the night;
    No revelation, no new sight.
    But less of what was once held tight.

    The self disperses, grain by grain;
    The former centres lose their claim,
    And name dissolves away from name.

    The pulse grows thin where once it burned;
    The weight of meaning, unconcerned,
    Relinquishes what it had learned.

    There is no fault. No cause to keep.
    No vigil worth the vanished deep.
    The mind will sleep.

    The mind will sleep.