Poem: water-veiled gut of guilt by Haley Wooning

water-veiled gut of guilt

By Haley Wooning
QuailBellMagazine.com

4.
water-veiled gut of guilt,

your death praises wholeness

on my altar

oaklimbs shift contorted and

gnarled                          holding year,

holding shadow


a dark light slants

                     through this black mire

my body bears its tides


a wish speaks silver within my eve,

she who speaks only to angels


why do mouths mortar against truth

and confession?


I walk with the sway

                               of last summer’s reeds


the violet heave of witchweed


once, I had a sea

autumn bells that ever-flickered


a wolfpaw’s briar


mothwings herded by wren song

and beastbreath,


        burning down rows of alders


flesh in wonderful anguish

charred                      and ravened


cut from the tongue, bound to myrtle,

the pelt, the mind


there is a black pond stillyet

with infinite night


she has deprived me of my name, the animals

stand in the day’s descent,


all that was without language


lifeless, descending skies

     black, thirsty clouds stretch the heavens
        

that dark guilt                 with which

I harbor

                hours


now, I have the earth, and all that

I am sown to


I pin my past to a hymn

and forgive it



O, night of wolves, dawn comes

with a pink tongue

               & the scythe of sun


when lovers gaze

            do they know the shape of duration?


perish 

           my heart


so wingless


I am a woman

                   within an answer           waiting


life flutters inconsolably