Whoever said still as a stone
never watched the pattern of lichen shifting
or the play of light as a way of speaking geographies
unknown. In this mythological drift, 
every map is set in stone. 

From star to stone, from sheep to shawl, time
spins us like a length of rope. Labyrinthine and
languorous, minotaur and muscle flattened
into horoscopes and clocks and endless hustle. 

A stone in every mouth for this mythological drought.
Whales detoured by sirens, cattle awaiting raids, dowries
still unsettled, millions of miles of untended graves— 
we are left with what remains. 

Followers and schemers march along to  
unseen meters in tv-mirrors, silhouettes of scorn
scrying shadows, while wanderers hear
whispers in the wood, the will-o-the wisps be done: 
spring dictum, supple thrum

Riparian relics bound
by the shape of the mouth,
by the mud’s slow tongue, thick
with sleep, slow and low, in slick relief.
Those Bronze Age horns at the bottom
of the lake rise to meet the mouths
of ancient men, not ghosts, but keepers of earth
and oath. 

Macha’s mouth resounds with some scheduled tumult. 
The earth bunches up, belts it out
through teeth of stone, the shadows lapping
ley lines toward the depths of what we know. 

Earth rubs its tongue against its teeth, 
the friction of beginnings, the fire and
relief. Migrations—earth fricatives,
 liquids lush as the forest’s tongue, 
the wheel spoke a song older than
speech, an alignment of stone and sun:

By thorn and thunder, by rose and roan,
arise ye spirits of star and stone!
On selkie and sylph, on fey and faun!
The watchers at the gate relent; the hinges
open toward the dawn.