The Still

The Still

The heads of grain are waving

   under the sickle sun,

     the sun gathered and brought

across the hill to the shed

    hidden
in the deep woods.

A copper pipe above a boiling vat

  where sun dissolves into a heady spirit. 

Siphons tube it drop by drop each drop

and carry it from fire to air

to throat

to float the head.

In the deep woods

  a root wanders out from the trunk

  beneath a mat of leaves of self

       wanders on and joins itself upon the next

'til every tree in the forest is one

and breathes with one breath.

The autumn and the spring rain

is falling, cells growing

 pebbles living under streams of drops,

   seeping into cracks and flowing

   drop by drop each drop

until they are the sea.

Heat and time

  draw forth the drops to puffs

      to chains of vapor

to clouds and fronts and cyclones

   and fog and mist and

rain again.

Two eyes gaze at two others

   mirrored back a thousand times

      and forward ten thousand

eye by eye. Tongue by tongue

a voice is singing in ten languages

   a thousand same songs.

I pick up the instrument

  and you play.

     A baby sleeps a child listens a woman smiles

and an old man sings along

with feathers on perhaps

or a cigar.

Drops distilled of flesh and spirit tubing

  from one life to another

     back far into another drop of being,

forward far and down, dropping down
to where we stand quiet

 waiting to drink.

    October 2010

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

To whom much thanks for featuring me today, and thanks to all who've emailed me, tweeted, or come by to check out the site.

Image: Distillation, by Roxy Paine, photo by Sheila Griffin, courtesy wikimedia commons