Land’s End
by Malachi Black
When did you wake? The sheets, still
softened by your sleep, are tousled
now, and almost cold. I turned
and, where your warmth was, all
was winter’s paw when I returned.
Come back, and lay your shiver down
beside me in this open bed: there
is no safety in the world outside
this quilt, this pillow, this bare thread.
Lie here, and let me braid your hair
until my hands are veined and old –
and weathered as the fisherman’s.,
whose fingers cast an ancient net
into a brightness they can’t hold.
This Gentle Surgery
by Malachi Black
Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze
glides almost too easily through me,
and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to
some flap of me is freed: I am severed
like a simile: an honest tenor
trembling toward the vehicle I mean
to be: a blackbird licking half notes
from the muscled, sap-damp branches
of the sugar maple tree . . . though I am still
a part of any part of every particle
of me, though I’ll be softly reconstructed
by the white gloves of metonymy,
I grieve: there is no feeling in a cut
that doesn’t heal a bit too much
Fourteen Lines 