The Geology of October Children

October Children are moonmilk
veins and a thirst for fire.
Amber eyes by a flashlight’s beam,
fossilized resin seaming
opaque shards with murky light
yellow beneath layers of crust.
Theirs is a paleontology
revealed through the scar
and scrape of long nails
scavenging lost symbols, forgotten
rites, written in rock and flesh.

Their souls are arthropods
scurrying along unmapped trails
that dip, dingy, into sedimentary places
where pulse muffles
and subterranean capillaries are dammed.

October Children: a queer alloy
of pagan chants and harvest nights.
Wedged between solstices, cast
by the rot of vegetation and the sweet
clot of sap, polished by coarse wool and crisp
northerlies— in that bronze age of the year,
amidst craggy moors, they raise their crucibles,
drink broth from the bones of masters’ feasts.
Their alchemy is a fifth, unforgiving element:
unnamed, whose density rivals
the core of stars gone cold.