Silo by Peter Wright
The silo squats in kindling grass,
kneeling like a giant monk under a
bliss so vast that kingfishers welter
in the equivocal wind. His concrete
thighs bulging arc & secretly grunt up
around buttock & the leaning back as
ballast. At night they appear in
hordes, a streaming silent echo marking
under the belly of sleeping ecstasy
like living tattoos. They fall in white
crescendos, commas, ellipses, the pubic
curls of questions & drop like periods
into it, into him- their stories are
the tangling currents of a turbulent
confluence, an orgy of silver
sufferings: basil, roses, chocolate.
The man comes down from the house in
sleep and stands at the iron opening.
Chanting on a swift tide, a tempest
whisper told far at sea. The figures
rise wet to face him speak, and slide
from the vessel to bound across the
parched plain as creatures once did
here before fences and plumbing. They
go and come as heavenly bodies whorl
until the man returns to his bed. It is
July. The dry farmers have begun
plowing in lost corn. The silo owns a
spigot known to the hand of those who
fraternize with the bones of stars.
~ Peter Wright
Peter Wright tends his fire on fifteen acres in Jefferson County, Kansas. He divides his time between studying the languages of the cloud shaped whales that migrate above and the grass clad people in the surrounding sea.
