Noise and Strife
By Sean Singer
For Salomon seith “It is a greet worshipe to a man to kepen hym fro noyse and stryf.”
—Chaucer, “The Canterbury Tales,” 1386
He worships the very ground I tread on.
—Anne Brontë, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” 1848
To seek the delirium of your ravage, the polestar for your bronze winds.
To be lascivious, to be enclosed in your shoals.
To seek your unconscious geography. Your still altar.
To be near your source when I am unsourced.
To taste your oil and fever ... to be thinker & feeder.
To your ruined pools & acorns under the snow. I have no other food.
Your groves & okie doke hills.
Untie a bow
Unite a row
Night allow
Right now
I am an unkempt beast near
soothe of your tongue stroke my bones
until I am close to your shape, substance, & mind.
Source: Poetry (September 2025)