Sharp the placenames of reliquary
Bitter the taste of the buried
I stand hunched by the Lake of Saints
Disinter my brutal brutalized heart
Vouchsafe passage to the newly birthed
To the freshly dead and to the undying
Lightener of stars, ghost of the hollybush
Beware nomenclature of fallow redemption
Flows the rivulet like a spun sin
Sallow swaying the swallow’s course
In gouts of rain, raiment of slow flood
Prevailing winds and the kissed bloodroot
(I mistook for bloodrot)
Here the reivers of deciduous souls
Pounce upon the precipitate
Now it is night and I am shadow minister
Presiding over the stopped clocks of the world
The candescence of flickering words, my unfaith
Dylan Willoughby has poems due out in Agenda (England) and Conduit. His photography was recently featured in Wrongdoing Magazine. Willoughby has been a residency fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell.