William Keener
Gold Leaf on Granite

Look past
the distraction of words,
our endless procession
of letters.

In the presence of white,
touch the page itself,
this rectangle,
this empty room,

a place for meditation,
if we ignore
the black scuff marks
on its ivory floor.

Let natural light
reflect the textures
of felted fibers,
cotton and flax,

egg shell, bread dough,
wool and bone,
the pressed shirt,
the linen shroud,

smooth, uncreased,
a sheet of paper deep
as any world we enter
through a book.

With the whorls
of our fingertips
we can read beneath
the watermarks,

between the laid lines,
faint patterns
left by the mesh
where pale pulp dried,

the cellulose in its slurry,
the wood chips, sawdust,
splinters, bark,
the cambium, the core

of a tree giving ground,
a legion of trees, a forest,
the billion leaves
they gird on every year,

their green machinery,
the sugars in the sap,
oxygen, carbon, lignin,
every molecule made

with heat, the photons
charging through space
from the flares of our sun,
its fiery hydrogen

burned into this room,
written into this page,
this book,
this volume of light.

*

WILLIAM KEENER has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Rattle, Runes, and The Savannah Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in The Kerf. His work has appeared in poetry anthologies such as Fresh Water: Poems of Our Rivers, Lakes and Streams, and in the book Sacred Stones, edited by Maril Crabtree (Adams Media 2005). His chapbook Three Crows Yelling, co-authored with poets Bill Noble and Michael Day, won the 1999 National Looking Glass Award sponsored by Pudding House Publications. In 2005, he was awarded an Artist's Grant from the Marin Arts Council.

TO ORDER COPIES: Send check or money order for $8 made out to Anabiosis Press. Send to Anabiosis Press, 2 South New St, Bradford, MA 01835.

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