#8 Carl Nellis: Logos

Logos

by Carl Nellis

Let there be

words enough

for our joy.

When I think on

his mother my eyes,

back and forth

through time,

taste blue dolphin.

In a world of

corporate logos

what has not been

publicized? Story

sequences draws

a whole from

particulars.

Trappers wound

snares, sealed hulls,

launched a thousand

trips south, mouths

agape for the boundless

earth, brought demand.

A voice of breath

that would be weak

in any clamor remakes

silent space

in its own timbre.

Settlers sued

for peace, bought land,

wrote ambition on

the sandstone, the red

shale, the desert places,

the coastal harbors,

the hills and watersheds.

No beast

I know has slithered

so loudly through time.

They made music.

The piano’s three

toes hover over

carpets, a bog

toad’s. Step down,

creature, we

want to hear

that ungodly clangor.

She was not called

Maria until the end.

Bubbles explode

upward through copper

piping with the sound

of falling gravel, snapping

loops, ragged wire.

Here lies one

whose name

is writ in neon

once or twice

each year.

The beast is

crushed with what

no eye, no ear,

has ever whispered

into silent space.

Ah, narrative

thread! She

On waking,

sways, boils

water, watches

light filter

leaf grid,

snow blanket:

bodies of

knowledge, shifting

in sleep,

musk hovering

over sheets

sewn with

bone needles.

It is the silent sway

over Jerusalem

that calls us

under firs, even

from the old rocker,

a to-and-fro unheard

over the tearing

of envelopes.

Fences, roofs,

my window,

the glass

towers bending

beams toward

ivory keys.

little remains

to be

spoken aloud.

Signs everywhere

bend, bow

strings, resound.

Let there be

few enough

words for me.

Carl Nellis is a steadfast friend, an excellent writer, and a beardly editor based in Beverly, MA.  A graduate literature student at Boston College, he enjoys tea, music, frisbee, all things Scottish, and all things literary.  His profound and beautiful poems can be found at:  http://laughingoverthesea.blogspot.com/ .