because Axum flows into Meroe
the Blue Nile into the White at Khartoum
those rivers together make a sea
unless ...
origins are strongest when the trace
is faintest - the conventual colony
squaring the haywire plain from a base
number should’ve ...
through the dying energumene’s rictus
the aerolite god of Emesa
announced it was the Sol Invictus
adored by Elagabalus Caesar ...
Adderbury is the swifts’ citadel
whose skirmishers skim Oxfordshire subways
and tchures before their chasse spirituelle
reaches Africa and Great ...
shriek by shriek the cavern where Pan pipes
shaded rape childbirth and exposure
it seemed appropriate when the son was ...
only after harvest do swifts head off
from this orange and gray sedimented
village where they pitch and squeal aloft ...
Pan at Oxford has a shaven plain
where the old calendar still has force
St John’s Eve is burnt into ...
the boys performing flips off the bridge
domineered the waterhole yesterday
assuming it was their privilege
to slice the green ...
the white path led to a place more silent
than any - to ground stiller than a vase
where I felt ...
Midsummer is the dog day Sabbath
and the mower’s mown despite the solstice
straw lanes where the plants grow up ...