Clinchfield Station

The road unwinds like a bandage.

These are the benchmarks:

A letter from Yucatan, a ball,

The chairs of the underlife.

Descent is a fact of speech,

A question of need-lampblack, cold-drill,

A glint in the residue:

Dante explained it, how

It bottoms out, becoming a threshold,

The light like a damp confetti,

The wind an apostrophe, the birds

Stone bone in the smooth-limbed trees.

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Mums in a vase, flakes in a hope chest:

Father advise us, sift our sins-

Ferry us back and step down;

Dock at the Clinchfield Station:

Our Lady of Knoxville reclines there

On her hard bed; a golf club

Hums in the grass. The days, dry cat tracks, come round,

A silence beneath the leaves:

The way back is always into the earth.

Hornbeam or oak root, the ditch, the glass:

It all comes to the same thing:

A length of chain, a white hand.