David Welch

Tributary (spell, n.)

 
To begin to speak    
     the eardrum’s
idle fable
 
Spell-raised, spell-
     caught, spell-soaked
Waspfull,
 
such gossip--
     to hold your mouth
to the gospels    
 
Charm or trick
     or to preserve
the jeweled dialect
 
of the dead…    
     mahogany, ocher…
The creatures
 
I cannot stir    
     A slip of clay
coupled
 
in fragments   
     standing at
the statue’s foot
 
Perhaps a later
     form of bells
A white rooster
 
crowing
     a query in
order to
 
spell the hours
     That we should
seldom as a letter
 
spoken last
     forever
A short period
 
of sleep
     under the cask    
and the shade
 
of perennials
     at the center
of it

--
David Welch is the author of Everyone Who Is Dead, and has poems recently published in journals including Free Verse, Greensboro Review, & Pleiades. He lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University where he is Assistant Director of Publishing & Outreach.