That’s what the leaves are telling us tonight.

Hear them panic and then fall silent,

So though we strain our ears, we hear nothing—

Which is far more terrifying than something.





Minutes seem to pass, whole lifetimes,

While we wait for it to show itself

This very moment, or maybe the next?

As the trees rush to make us believe





Their branches banging on the house

To be let in and then reconsidering.

All those millions of leaves suddenly quiet

As if not wishing to add to our terror,





With something evil lurking out there,

And drawing closer and closer to us.

The house dark and quiet as a mouse,

If one had been brave to stick around.

At the chunk of rock

              They moor their ship their only memory

It is noon the wind lies down

              On the warm deck

And they gather the lots made of bone

              Shuffle the playing cards

Chance arcs in by the mast

              In the sound of the collapsing cards

The captain will not play the game

              His daughter is different

Master of this place

              Of measurement and particle

He will not let her at the foot of the rock

              He would like to remain faithful to the instruments



Still the ship is moored

              The island is crumbling into the sea

When light goes down the waves come up

              Slip in under the netting

Watching through themselves

              Under the pulsing stars she convokes the crew

Voice a rich mezzo she explains her calculations

              Spilling over a train of papers in her hand

Crafted in ink with symmetric diagrams

              Glossing over the blurred waves

There will be no wind for days she says

              Only the lots will serve here

Only the bones the metacarpals

              Still retain a sense of direction

The crew members must nod taken by

              Her suite of equations her form her diction

The meeting is adjourned

              And the captain unknowing does not observe

Later in his daughter’s tent

              She hums keening music

She is hearing something else

              Which filters down through dusk



The sound of birds tutoring their young

              In the violet hew call

She is hearing rituals for pulling the sun

              Passed down through the blood and sound

And she fixes the bones of the lot

              Painting over unprotected cards

Shapes the many fingers of chance

              With the sign of her death

She will not be wrong she has dedicated everything

              To the density of water the statue of Archimedes the covenant with the dead

For the captain of the ship she will be

              Agamemnon’s love in the Aegean



When morning comes pastel-blue and vaulting

              She has already entered the fullness of it

Again the crew gathers but something is on their lips

              The captain reaches for his lots

Casts the bones up into the blue

              They hang suspended for a moment

Descend down into his fragile hands cupped

              He throws his shock to the waves

Seizes the cards from his oarsman

              Lays out the five symbols but they confirm it

His daughter will be left for the wind

              To appease nothing some statue in the Acropolis

Mixing her body with the rock

              The crew bursts into sound

Wind coming like white noise

              Tone clusters mechanical voices waves piling up

Spilling out from air

              Bones gaining heat

Turning white-hot radiating bodies

              Now the explosion comes

A small bomb shatters them

              Smoke hovers over

Plumes are what is left is

              Time for them in the frames of the sea

The captain’s daughter died here on this rock

              Has it been two thousand years for her

Let me begin. I am 



a Grinder. Bones are what I grind. 



  



I come from a long line. 



  



And I haven’t spoken recently 



to a child, but 



I remember 



  



childhood well – 



  



remember half cocked, livid, nowhere to climb. 



I mean to come on strong; 



  



maybe we can get acquainted here. 



  



You can’t know a man until you know his profession. 



Will you get to know me, boy? Will you 



  



walk with me while I explain 



how to grind an Englishman? 



  



In my work 



  



I don’t use many metal tools 



save a knife to ease the husking; 



  



instead I push my hands 



  



at what-was-flesh, unrigging it, 



at huddled masses of unincorporated cells 



and through fluids. 



  



Where at first they are dead bodies, tangent to my table, 



  



when I’m halfway through they carpet it 



and run apart through its grooves. 



  



And then the grinding of the bare bones. 



And then the baking of the white meal, 



  



alchemy! born 



  



into bones into 



bread I come (from a long line) from my workshop 



  



stained 



  



with no remorse Jack 



I am tired though 



and a Grinder is what I am; 



  



when I go to church my body 



is loose lost fumbling in the blind pew. 



  



Still you don’t know that my mother asked for no husband, 



  



and raised me up in this tall thin house; 



suckled me in the nursery down the hall, you must have passed it. 



  



And I chose to walk the church with a ruddy girl, 



  



purple pink and dust her skin - 



but you’ve met my wife. You clung to her 



breasts like her own babe, though I think your thoughts were less than filial. 



  



But you will never know her, never 



  



work in her as sunrise works in night, 



as my grindstone in bone. 



  



Jack, Jack. 



  



I still remember - it’s not easy to forget - 



my mother’s motto, passed to me: 



  



fee, fie, foe – 



  



meaning first 



the holding of land 



second the cursing of lovers 



  



and third, one on whom you’ll have to set your sight, 



  



someday, Jack, who will 



want you gone.