Spur of slipped

serif

           a jolt of brittle

                      outside, in a rasp,
a kenning of a not-

           given-shape, a noise

like grass and trees

           unmouthed, long water
ripening,

           wind-flutes of bamboo,

some kind of this-ness

           lost, a seed of many
silences begets

           its pitch

and shift, coughs a glottal
choke of stress

           the affricates align

           the soft of lauds begins

to pattern in my mind
and I become of scales

                      which lip

                      my skin to pearl

                      and now I know
that I was there—

           zoetic in the plangent

           dark, a breathing

           through a hyoid bone
an unhatched word,

           a stuttering in

           the throat of mud,

           just as fish dried into legs
and Earth was tamed

                      by naming