G.C. Waldrep

CROYLAND ABBEY

irrigation or exit
November
the pearl presence
ensconced
in prayer’s mouth
whose tongue, whose
seasonal apse
weeping
comes to ground
here, to rest
autumn’s glands
milk their bronze
museum
comes the hour
of fasting, but
(in prayer’s mouth)
the same water
only
without gravity’s
percussive tyranny
breathe in
the marshes’
dank parliament
Ophelia
in the mystery cycle
is the first
to testify, blue riff
surfacing
the sky’s drain
a better warden
perhaps
the concentric flocks
make their small
gauze
it’s early
I have pierced
my inconsequence

Author: G.C. Waldrep

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and The Earliest Witnesses (Tupelo/Carcanet, 2021).  Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Paris Review, New England Review, Yale Review, Colorado Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Conjunctions, and other journals.  Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch.

Plume: Issue #64 November 2016