Seed

    Willow, cut to its hidden houses.
    Something secret furls 
    unfurls its stem-self

seed
slopes    slews 
under    crystal 
                 skin    
                 (its)
flesh 
           blooms
to tone –
coralling a milky alumben
in water’s distress,
floats,
|stays|
                   alive
winds its silver
thread in brine –
fleshed frond
     &
secret, 
            still –    
a
silver thread
pulls-up
       willow’s
ochre
        curtain.
Truncated
cut, yet
           I saw it —
                willowGrove
                           willowGrief — 

winter / flower / blossoms 
lie on wet ground 
bereft of their generations

                           seed will lie
                               | seed will lie |




Copyright Chris Murray, 2021
First published Timber Literary Journal, September 2021
Online URL: https://timberjournal.org/archive/seed

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a note about the text

the poem seed responds to a series of poems (seed, cells, hunger) first published in the blind (2013). I have taken the blind out of circulation as I am working with the text at this time.

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