Friday the thirteenth of a winter that didn't arrive

Friday the thirteenth of a winter that didn't arrive

Covering each bead of sand,

Slithering through the carved maze on the ground,

the brand embedded deep in the flesh 

that glows in the sun like the marbles of a pale-skinned mansion

Is the white.

***

I take up a mouthful

of what tastes like the blood of ten thousand and ninety eight willows.

What binds the heavens and earth together in this forsaken morning

right at the seam of the horizon

Is the white.

***

The sultry white stays with the land

Through the sun and through the clouds

whatever comes between the white and its lover,

The white and the snakes on its shoulders,

Is doomed to end

All the things that might grow

All the things that may stand.

***

Except for the sharp burn of the mighty tree

that bends the earth in its shape

The wood that feeds from where lilies were buried

The wood that drinks up the glory poured from above.

The white, coiled and brighter than ever

kisses every sand grain in its way

Nothing can eat up the slippery white,

Nothing 

but the Tamarisk.