Geognosy

now an absence

where?

wall rocks

squeak and rub

sycamore whistles

wind

at vespers

trundling

stone-ground

effluvium

rocks ask an answer

the merganser

writes the sky

overwhelmed

overloaded

stilled in chinks

*

cleavable gneiss

prismatic

down-weighs

desert spoons

rock-rested

peregrines

wend about

and reach

out and touch

morning

glide into leafless

light

above the river

screech

free above

garnets

strewn unevenly

under

blooming buckhorn

cholla

*

a universe of branches

conversing

in idioms grown

apart

as they dangle over

water

frolick like rocks

perched or

found nesting

among roots

amygdules

of chalcedony

pinyon-juniper

woods

a sight someone knew

once and said

hang it right

in the eye

*

tests suggest

instruments

are inadequate

antiquated

antediluvian

forfeitable

prefer gnosis

thus

subduction

feels like

scoria and tuff

shuddering

mudstone

entrenchment

thus divining

is germane

to conglomerates

and jasper

underlayment

sublimated

detrital grains

in relief

ink-limned

flinty trysts

*

botryoidal crust

wavellite

boarded by

the broad

white sky of blue

wisps shifting

over shores

overboard

open underneath

the riparian

moment split

now and then

no down

stream swollen

fossiliferous

ravine

willowed olivine

dipped

banked thrust

upped?

serpentine relic

bedding

air like fire

arrives across

chasms with alacrity

and echo

*

forking river

over its take

winding in meadows

of mallow

sodalite in nepheline

night-reckons

downstream in a tamarisk

stand

a family of grebes

eye

what floats by

face down

to come to rest

easy to bob

gently at night

little waves

agitate the veil

of star lights

*

ochrous lumens

inside laminar

striations such

as at

the red wall

ablation

repose in quiet

illimitableness

let be

laid down

quaternary matter

gleam

deep in interstices

lambent

among the epochs

lolling

**

Christopher Title lives with his wife and two young sons in Lauderdale, Minnesota. He can generally be found in the subterranean chamber of his house composing poetry and dreaming of primordial Earth. For the last ten years, Title has served as English professor for The Art Institutes International Minnesota in Minneapolis. Title completed undergrad work in English at Northern Arizona University, a Master’s in Education at St. Mary’s, and is currently finishing his MFA Thesis at Hamline University, where he recently served as a poetry editor for Water~Stone Review. His work has appeared in Ash Creek Press, Living Out, Main_Frame, Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Asphalt Sky.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/titlec_poems.php