Covenants

Whole townships flooded as prodigal hosts
survey ruined Decoration Day wreaths—
and as I never could help but count the ghosts

in TVA lakes, their basin museums reefed
with antediluvian husks (a schoolhouse,
tobacco hooks, two ox-tongues), strange priests

wavering rusted fronds in the Cumberland,
its sediments eddied with curls traced tight,
so each morning tefillin garlands

my arm, the shadow-strapped tail of some kite
adrift on this Pentecost’s tally of winnowed
tares thrown weightless, abstract in the sun’s light.