The Calculus of Owls / Sarah Gardner

   What Writing Is Quiet thoughts grow crowless. Silver rustle, floodline spindle. Finally, the water faces itself: a rock glossed naked where the current parts, storehouse of a broken peak. Every tree here is a locked box, every thorn a collar buttoned to the top, and yet among the mosses: wild garlic, thyme. Being conversant, I know all exchanges begin on the tongue. Being human, I want a taste. I have been along the nettled bank and so have seen beneath the canopy, where wasps pit their young in a paper hurricane dry as a pharaoh’s heart a thousand years in an earthen jar. None so born grow on honey.