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Three 
​by Eric Pankey

DIVINATION OF HIDDEN THINGS [the hazel]

​                                           Hermes braids a staff of hazel wood

                                                    fire springs from a hazel branch

                                                             lichen on the hazel’s grayish-brown bark

                                                                                  hazel catkins in cold wind

     nightjars and willow warblers alight in a coppiced hazel

                                                                          I cut hazel rods for dowsing 
                                                                   
                                                                          I cut hazel rods to reveal ley lines
                
                        at the midpoint of the Otherworld, a hazel

   magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, copper enrich the hazel nut

                                                 for a thatching spar, slit a hazel gad

                                            below the hill of Tara, a hazel festooned with votive offerings

                                                               four woven hazel-wattle hurdles enclose a sacred space

                                                                                  hazel understory beneath birch and oak 

                                                      into a holy well, a hazel drops plump late autumn fruit

                                                        while harvesting hazel wands on Sunday, I meet the Devil

LATE QUARTETS

             The canyon walls’ striations
Wrought by water, by wind,
                          Reveal deviations
             In the parallel of lines.

                         : :

             How to integrate the minutiae— 
The febrile marks, a torn web,
                          A ragged rope bridge— when
             Each act of ritual distances?

                         : :

             The erstwhile-in-focus 
Is now all a blear as if 
                          A lens has been flipped
             Or smudged by touch.

                         : :

             A crow looms like the shadow
Of a submerged ship:
                          The surface, all a sheen, 
             Burnished with a potter’s stone.
​
                         : :

             A pond becomes a meadow,
A meadow a pond over years.
                          A narrative left to conjecture,
             The present is unprecedented.   

                         : :

             Doubt, mortality, desire--
You know—a comedy. Nothing
                          To discard from the slaughter.
             Each bone fragment and scrap useful, used.

                         : :

             The water sheds, seeks its level--
(A stone’s throw away, or some other
                          Measure scaled to limitation)--
             Marsh edges blue with dusk-ink.

                         ​: :

             How to test a text, its thread’s
Tensile strength as it snags
                          And then is pulled through?
             A flawed stitch, then, is ripped.

FIELD RECORDING

A mortarless stonewall follows the hill, then tumbles. 

Where a path threads deep shade, a hazel
Oversees the cold lap and gabble of a holy well;
A door, relieved of its function, serves as a table

(An arrangement, as in music; 
                                            an adaptation, 

A working with, or through, what already exists.)
The semblance is fixed, yet memory weathers 
In unforeseen ways: the accord, the calm

Of three notes sounded at once: water, hazel, stone.

Eric Pankey
Eric Pankey is the author of many collections of poetry, most recently The Future Perfect: A Fugue. He is the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University. 

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