My Dream of Your Runes
There is rune like a pictograph and rune like a large stone in grass, covered
in pictographs and
I have known both of them now: unrelated twins such as these
could cipher whole universes for me
(although I am dulled to the slight inclines
of asphalt and resting garbage that are
the outside. And I walk as if through a slough; life on earth can be heavy with drag.)
I have an image, lately, whipping in my mind like a pennant: a reminder of what I cannot cease to resist:
It is me and I am on my knees, and I have both arms wrapped around my head, as if expecting
a hail of matter from space,
sudden curtain of jagged rock and cosmic metal.
It is a sort of pictograph, it means,
My Dream of Your Runes.
(A rune can be bone fragment, shard of poem. Brought to rest on corporeal plane,
it means merely token–
some drudged up penny that speaks of simple love, not of darkness, Byzantine and futile.)
But here,
untouched by Iron Age, I could claw strata forever and only hit clay.
I could eat the clay, and call it bread.
There is more darkness around than I care to palpate
(“ It is me and I am on my knees, ”)
and luck is effectively fate’s opposite, especially if, like Gunnhild, you’re being drowned in a bog.
I place her image inside of my body, suspended in cytoplasm;
her bones don’t scrape me.
I see her as pictograph, made abstract by time. As body of text, of
My Dream of Your Runes,
strong, like a saga hero
with blue teeth and unfixed eyes
acknowledging, disregarding, continuing- with
wrathful freedom,
utter sweetness
Allison Hummel is a poet living on the Northeast side of Los Angeles. Previous works include two chapbooks, Beauty State (2013) and Vessels (2016.) She is always amenable to pen pals and collaborations.
aglimpseof.net 