Ehwaz
across this high heartland of outlaws and spirits
where Eyvindur crossed the knuckles of sleeping giants
and glacial winds carry murmurs from nonexistent voices--
steam billows like horses’ manes from fumaroles,
chariots of hydrogen sulfide swell to wheezing chords
cataracting endlessly in this pastel highland song.
oh, peregrine, have you come to learn our names:
the anonymous wellsprings of your placeless seeking,
chapters of fractured inertia and flux in verse?
your migration does not abide by paths; you are a portrait
of refraction, an accretion of strange ricochets. as the snow
falls over the track and creaks like a raven underfoot, know this:
on some faraway evening long after your motion
has come to rest, you’ll look back and realize you have,
quiet as lichen, become a stone cairn, a waypoint altar
of scorched runes flung from maws of moaning earth
to speak through time of exile and migrant footfall,
fading outlines of cloven hooves and sheepskin boots,
the sulphur ghosts of stolen horses
who, quick as a breath in winter, dissolve,
like we did, back into the vapor and loam
across this high heartland of outlaws and spirits
where Eyvindur crossed the knuckles of sleeping giants
and glacial winds carry murmurs from nonexistent voices--
steam billows like horses’ manes from fumaroles,
chariots of hydrogen sulfide swell to wheezing chords
cataracting endlessly in this pastel highland song.
oh, peregrine, have you come to learn our names:
the anonymous wellsprings of your placeless seeking,
chapters of fractured inertia and flux in verse?
your migration does not abide by paths; you are a portrait
of refraction, an accretion of strange ricochets. as the snow
falls over the track and creaks like a raven underfoot, know this:
on some faraway evening long after your motion
has come to rest, you’ll look back and realize you have,
quiet as lichen, become a stone cairn, a waypoint altar
of scorched runes flung from maws of moaning earth
to speak through time of exile and migrant footfall,
fading outlines of cloven hooves and sheepskin boots,
the sulphur ghosts of stolen horses
who, quick as a breath in winter, dissolve,
like we did, back into the vapor and loam