Laynie Browne

"A Mullein Sceptre in My Hand"

                                                                    for Willa Cather
 

The dream, a thousand dreams
old ports of white foam: what is to be
Go to sell a saucepan

Volcanic cradle

In a city full of brief inscription
quickening broken houses

a new sail full of exiles
 

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The first possessor
worn down mother-language
a sole gracious object

A silver cup, rags and rusty kettles
Rain-marks behind a clock tower

Oarsman, a damp hole filled with loops and flourishes

Gutter pallid
a chalk flicker
 

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Haze mauls faint-blue
claws in noose country

A sturdy bunch of prairie
stretched across a bed
 

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Lambent,
read stars

hereafter

perils
rolling
red

Prophecy, a leader of kin

A caravan of
undulations
 
 

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A dent of heaven
could not impart
a tied wheel

"Stricken, she left familiar earth behind her"

A hailed blue lake
skirmishes where the railroad ends

Native silence
a slow moving sweep of discretion

Toiling larks
star, its fierce necessity

Out dusk, the lips of larks
Out earth, tired fires of sunset
 

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To mandolin,
a water ditch

A moon-enchanted plain
had swung

Would our shade could drink
the blue night

Hush my kitchen
on the black pond water
 

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Doorstep, in her arms
an owl slept

Windmill modder cry
a drifting herd

an' road so steep
rasped the tale again

Bring home sheep

Entrammelled gambler
sorrow marble diurnal
 

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Murmur of old stone
yellow water

Cross no mill

arms of darkness

No matter which primrose
rondel

Poppies doorways
browse
 

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Yearneth
violet blows

turf comeliest
on a higher hill, ransom

Dogwoods starry
fell in flocks

Crooned bower
Canst thou conjure?
 

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Bid longings
a winter wood

Covet long ages fled
a torch of pale vigil

Crimson hour
a crown

Beheld
a pearl
merchant
taunting
 

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cloud Cleopatra
go a-Maying

six lips singing

fray of short lived weather

Wrought of dust
true asleep

The moonset
a stone house
 

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