Michele Thompson

Cantrip and Loveletter

Science has made the world a smaller place. The laws of modern physics describe the stuff that our world is made of more perfectly than the older elements of air, water, fire, earth, and aether.

And yet the classical elements stay with us, growing in symbolism and cloaked in romance even as the world has rightly rooted itself in the empirical and provable. They can be touched and felt. They are tangible in our common dailiness; palpable to our experiences in a way that atomic particles cannot be. It is the air that we breathe, the earth under our feet, the indispensable fire, the water that flows within and without, the aether to which we all return.

So too, the people in our lives, whom we love or loved or remember are basic to our existence even as we are surrounded by a sea of humanity. The kindred, the friend and the lover, the guardian and the protected; they live not only in a physical sense and memory. They exist not only in what is or was. They make a story of something invisible to the world, what exists only between two and no one else, and what might have been; what is and was unsaid.

Cantrip and Loveletter is a study of the binary. It is a series of images that tells a story of two elements together, each with another and paired with itself. Each image is coupled with a poem written for someone, a small piece of a larger tale of two people, myself and another. The world has indeed been made a small place, but it is populated with the enormousness of our elemental and imperfect selves.

 

Sacrificial Bonfire

Where is he who has me under,
my fool of fools,
the honey man
with your shroud and kisses

I am not blind
you are made of earth
and earth of you
you are woven with green leaf

and weave of me,
breathing gold, sweat
sunlight, forest, and dusk
we are as twins and holy

And common time is not our end
baring tongue and dagger
and a cool thumb
drawn across the brow

no requisite psalm, no blasphemy
we are gravity and we are light
we are simple one and two and
we will draw us down to dust or drowning.

By our troth
we will draw us down to dust or drowning.

 

Under Sun

We stand in opposite rows
hedge divided; berry picking
when there is no need
this is the twentieth-first century,
when jam and juice
come from a store,
no, this is
a sensual throwback
a luxury of hard work
where the too hot sun
freckles our skin.

I like it
and you don’t
where baby skin fruit
stains our lips and fingers
a harlottish red
and the sight of pips
left behind
is almost sexual
and we giggle
and gossip
I envying your speed
you coveting my choices.

It’s a rivalry isn’t it?
husbands, homes,
our dailiness
your science, my art
the gaps that open and close
it is a polite politic
that makes us stick
pointed garish
gory red tongues out
at each other through the holes
in the hedge
and laugh.

 

Begin

Nos conocimos ayer, nos besamos hoy, y nos casamos manana.
-unknown schizophenia patient

I.
a smooth hand to
smooth skin
spine, jaw, ribcage, navel
and so am I to you,
blind fingerprints hunting
undiscovered territory
in a black atmosphere,
a hollowness hallowed
by the room, full of breath
filled by the unseen;
something like God
and heavily palpable,
like an orange in the hand,
a flinching kiss,
an ache.

II.
snakes of hands
I will live in these textures
for a terminal always
for possession is as possession finds
and we are all conquered territory;
hands as snakes
my justice and mercy
mine
but it is you crept beneath my skin
yours, made of parasite promise
levering dominance, submission,
justice and mercy with no calling
there is no you, I, or end-
only a monologue for the sleeping.

III.

are you dead yet, or gone?
the door has become important,
opening
in my imagination
closing
for a future too soft
too solid
I do not know the bonds
and limits
of trust-
no scripture of safety
and surely
this is the nature of faith
a variable, a farce, a heart
crumpled and rolled in your direction.

 

 

Broken Bull Sonnet

mouth of wine and mead spinning
turntable spun, you caught me,

nick of time pale falling found a
first kiss and sealed fates to be

knitted and knotted and ringed us
in poor madness, honeymoonless,

not a penny for a baby, but a happy
war, stoned, textbooks, pocketed

things, a warm morning bed;
a turn of two of cups, two swords

by firelight; I dreamt the ghosts
and the wasteland after the storm.

And we were lesser creatures then.
And we were greater creatures then.

 

 

Feverfew

A flutter before the breaking
a whisker and wink;

I dreamt in dandelion haste, of day
and just a day, no more and

morning is dark, my wordless friend
when I slip from you and shiver,

dressing in moonlight, silence.
I would rather leave you in dreaming,

heat the kettle and smudge my lips.
You are a sleepy kiss between

my teacup and the day;
and the day is long and I

do not think often of you,
and there are when I return,

a few moments that are mine,
like forgotten wings, clean time

when I am linear and square, and
then I am glad that you are home

and there is time for chores
and time to hear your thoughts,

time for bathing and for laughing,
time to fit within your arms.

I know my left hand from right,
the world is wide and I would

still the stars, make a butchery of time
and bless our everyday.

I wake and brush away the stardust,
the dandelion, and wash off the night;

How cold the branches bear
the morning dark beyond the sill.

 

 

Aspen

Gone to no more path,
where all roads

leaf and lead to madness
stitching myself from

body to body,
palm over rough mouths

as digging for meaning
from fingertips

when motionless
I will to skin of paper

white and gored,
thin in motion

a slow made dance
as bones who bend to wind

or when I lay me down and
salt your roots

I am made your enemy
not to see your shade no more

but see that the wind has
rightly torn away my voice

and I may sing here fine
without offense,

aside more voices than bearing
I am not one but one

and jealous hearts
now tangle in my hair.

 

 

Firebuilding

What is there to fire building
An airy heap of small and dry
A trap to keep a spark.

I feed an ever more hungry bird
lay down a triangle to flame and think
there is witchcraft in threes and kisses.

It keeps my pitch streaked hands to task,
Here sunlight is costly and I smile for
the hiss and crackle from damp wood.

 

 

Unkempt Prayers

Suppose some red-orange star
or an idle god in an idle hour
heard some unvoiced words,
caught me looking at your hands,
and granted for pique or pity
these unkempt prayers.

Then I would have you.

But I have fallen from grace
with earless rocks and filmy faith;
what could be held in your words,
my hands, the clockwork of our days
for some other key’s winding or
witch’s work will have to wait.

 

 

The Morning Hour

It is a little motion
a body swimming forward,

Momentum.

Stopping to look around
for you. It must have started
with your rough cheek to mine. Hold.

Held.

Naked for a breath and then
ice makes all things solid, still.

We like to build our walls.

Maybe all it took was for you
to pluck me from air
down to the dance.

The morning hour has gold
in its mouth, but the night,
our bed, this sheet of nothing;
you will not, nor I, be found.

 

 

Baja

Long is the way to be here
on runaway thumbing down the miles,
on riding desert wind.

You grin, lay back in a fortunate truckbed,
become ever more my ragged Pan
with nothing to do, nothing to say but what is said to the wind.

Not sure should I smile, I have my pack, a scarf for my hair,
sleep is only any bus in dust, strange sleepers at my shoulder,
It is taken as given, only the journey.

Long is the way to here and here is cheap, not home,
a blue maze of tile and laundry, shade and bed,
we hate each other as travellers do, poor, easy, endless we find.

We find night children, the fish; the broken bells, icons,
pause at the holy water, not blessing ourselves as we should
in the heaving hot, we have a handful of words, enough.

Some to barter up the boatmen, claim an island of our own,
to swim with rays, to mourn, be naked beings under naked
skies, sun branded and sun quiet, to sleep under marine stars.

Some to fill bellies with powder bread, cucumber, mango, tequila,
to stretch ourselves in the heat, we live on our proximity,
on nerves, on our cleavage lines, on blurred lines.

Long has been this way, years
have made of us a mobius pair, a long while,
bound as kin to kin.

But barefoot, I creep away while you sleep, a secret, a
skip on dirty cobblestone, a drink of sweet lime tea
free of your knots, free of stale comforts.

I marvel at the thin flesh on sunken horses,
I want to ride and cannot bear it,
I walk starless and invisible to burden no one.

I want no tying down,
I see drivers slouched asleep in their taxis,
fishmongers, children of fishmongers.

I dumbly watch the thread of discontent, the mechanics
of happiness, the uncertain mirror,
I look into open doors, say yes, smile.

I walk without purpose,
I receive the blessing,
I let the rain soak into my skin.

And I come back with will and fire, salt and a still beating heart
you have needed me as I have needed you,
need delight even with trouble, the pain, the shallow grave.

A paradise of necessity and in the end of all things
we love each other, as travelers do, found and founded
is long remembering of our selves fixed and bound.

 

 

Crown of Grass

This strange one,
this holy man

cloaked in willow
and weeds.

He is hunter pacing grass,

taking time as trophy,
thought as rich meat.

When his hard heart
is changed for flesh,

he is my champion

against the rain,
against the darkening,

a spell,

a crow beating wings
against a small earth.

Again, he casts down

his crown of grass,
breathes true love

in my ear. Again,
closes his eyes and

lets slip a brave skin;

lays down to me
only his self, waits for my

transformation to worship
and for my broken blackbird song.

 

 

The Wedding Song

UFOs and comets were reported
to be flying about in the sky tonight-
strange lights to send us and warm us
and I am your girl as of six-ten, amen
as fine a bride as maids can muster
with paste and humor and estrogen,
free to leave strands of hair to cling
and I smudge you with my color of
lipstick like a territorial marking.
It flutters like such a little thing;
the constant buzz of the fly in
circuit around our untried room
the weight of gold made heavier
by script and intention and hope;
but I have been stamped approved;
let there be no mistake of my depths,
my words of fear, my affection-
and rightly, I will not keep the same sort
of secrets that I have kept in the past.

 

 

Bookending

Must you be seated on the knife sharp edge
of my world, fingers curled around mine
bookending the wine, the lunch plates,
the bill and books.

You read yours to me and I to you
from mine, like slow clockwork ticking
the shade across our afternoon until
we rise and turn to home.

And you are useless help with dinner,
twining arms around me as I salt and cut
and you are banished to your own world for a time
like slow clockwork ticking the evening business,

until we lie wrapped around each other like
Burroughs’ snakes, you teach me
jokes to spite my serious joy;
I teach you all of the Italian I know,

mi lo dia una bacia;
even as I fall asleep,
even as I fall asleep,
laughter like sugar syrup on my tongue.

 

 

Hands of Earth and Scars

You come on resurrected
in dreaming, an unwanted ward
against a shapeless sin;
in this I stop my ears,
it is work to ignore
that other broken you,
your voice that creeps
with growls and rings,
arrogant mirth making
bubbles in the bloodstream

I do not remember.

Did you ever teach me to swim?
Did I ever fall asleep with my head
upon your shoulder?
A ring for my finger of firefly light,
It is a little memory covered in dust.
You are a man of cellophane.

I do not remember.

But then I am in your shadow
trailing your finger to make a row
planting tiny seed fit to my hand
not yours; in their service,
hands full of earth and scars
hands full of tomato offerings,
gifts of rose hip and onion skin,
hands that train green limbs to
your will; if you exist at all
it is in the sunrays of the garden.

 

 

August

There is a before and after
a weighing and a finding,
what do we do with our fingers
when we come to the ends
of the threads, logic has failed;
we hold ourselves upright like
weeds, like sickly trees propped
in place with tie and stake
against the wind; against the
weight of our own gravity,
it is three minutes past midnight
the night is dark and filled up
with shadow and everything
is well until it is not.