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
+
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
+
Haze mauls faint-blue
claws in noose country
A sturdy bunch of prairie
stretched across a bed
+
Lambent,
read stars
hereafter
perils
rolling
red
Prophecy, a leader of kin
A caravan of
undulations
+
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
+
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
+
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
+
Murmur of old stone
yellow water
Cross no mill
arms of darkness
No matter which primrose
rondel
Poppies doorways
browse
+
Yearneth
violet blows
turf comeliest
on a higher hill, ransom
Dogwoods starry
fell in flocks
Crooned bower
Canst thou conjure?
+
Bid longings
a winter wood
Covet long ages fled
a torch of pale vigil
Crimson hour
a crown
Beheld
a pearl
merchant
taunting
+
cloud Cleopatra
go a-Maying
six lips singing
fray of short lived weather
Wrought of dust
true asleep
The moonset
a stone house