The mole
is out of light

The tunnel
is out of land

The vein
is running out of ore

In response to Via Negativa: Groundsman.

I have yet to become the bowl that can hold
without breaking; that, left out on the balcony,

would not get kicked into a corner or fall
without shattering on patio tile below.

So far I have opened to rain and the overflow
of what’s poured into me. The taste of salt

is a most familiar tonic. Sometimes I long to be
the flat and even surface of a dinner plate,

to be the forgettable saucer on the coffee table:
what doesn’t brim so much as to be unbearable.

In response to Via Negativa: Guest.

Only twice in my life did I see
my father naked, unpeeled from his

careful clothes— once, through a keyhole:
Sunday afternoon, the bedroom door locked;

pale sheen of his thighs glistening under
my mother’s. I tried not to make a sound,

not even when one of them got up to drape
a shirt over the doorknob— a little light

goes through the weave of cloth, and the view
ripples. The second and last time, he lay

on a makeshift pallet on the hospital floor,
debris from earthquake tremors around us.

Nurses had thrown the covers back as they
went to work with paddles for the shock.

His body bore all the marks of time
passing, passed— the blueing flesh,

the wrinkled sex, thinnest vein of blood
beginning its slow trek down the side

of his mouth. Over and over, hands like doves
tried to pull him back. But he was gone,

into that sheen more inscrutable than the sun:
into the silence that let us see how hills

and orchards went on for miles, how light had
slipped off what used to robe the tender organs.

In response to Via Negativa: Felled.

For years I tried to be
that kind of relative others
sent letters to, with a paper
outline of a foot tucked into
the last page: size 6 1/2, black

patent leather please. Then
laptop, digital camera, Hills
Bros. coffee, bags of Hershey’s
kisses. The smell of mints
and chocolate, milled soap,

toothpaste. I save these in brown
boxes, in my house overrun with ink
and paper. In the margins, I write
apologies before folding these
into envelopes stamped with wings.

In response to Via Negativa: Ordure.

“Who wants to reach
inside the marvelous?”
~ Tung-hui Hu

I begin with what I have
and go on toward all I’ve ever

wanted. How beautiful the film
of moisture on the grass, not yet

taken by the heat. Once, a man
in a great coat stood on that

street corner, raised both
his arms, and solemnly twirled

without stopping. Here at the end
of the fence, the metal newel has two

indentations that give it the familiarity
of a face. How still the river is at midday—

as if all the wet, bright spirits
have decided to lie down for a nap.

Oh traveler. Sometimes the sea
is calm, sometimes the swells

are overwhelming. When
were you duped into thinking

the rudder was only a slotted
spoon, a coffee stirrer, a plastic

toy? Whatever you read by the blue
glare of handheld light is not

the real story of any future
that might actually come to pass.

You left that uninhabitable country,
taking what you could. Yes, it is

a common tendency to want more
than need. So many knick-knacks

tied up with twine. So many pots
and plates with crackled glaze.

Lowered into the water, they’ll float
awhile then sink into foamy oblivion.

But touch the wood of this craft
and remember how skillfully built

it was from the start. No guarantees,
but overhead, the constant skies and stars.

In response to Via Negativa: Visionary.

of the day we bury my father-in-law’s ashes,
rain falls at last after a week of dulling

heat, then clears up just before the drive
to the cemetery in Niles. We pass the Polish
bakeries, and St. Joseph the Betrothed

Ukrainian Catholic Church with its thirteen
slightly faded gold domes symbolizing the twelve
apostles and Jesus— and I think this is possibly

the first time I’ve seen any reference to Joseph as
“The Betrothed.” This seems a fitting discovery,
an accidental motif: for my immigrant father-

in-law could be said to have worked at several
trades, and also was a canny do-it-yourselfer:
for his wife he built a wooden step-stool

and refinished the floors of the duplex
where he and his family have lived for almost four
decades. This is the house with yellow siding,

a gargoyle on the front stoop, a small area in back
that doubles as a spare room, enough for some storage
boxes and one cot. My third older daughter and I

fit into it many years ago, when she was about 7;
perhaps the letters faintly spelling out her name
in pencil are still there, somewhere on the wall

where she wrote them. Don’t we all harbor a wish
to leave part of ourselves behind, to find a ledge
on the rock the tribe calls home? At the cemetery

office, everyone has gathered. It’s a short distance
to the section where numbered family plots have been
purchased, and the priest is ready with a baton

of holy water for the prayers and blessing.
We stand in a semicircle facing the hole in the ground
where the wooden urn, encased in a protective box,

is lowered; then take turns dropping flowers
into the grave. It is such a long way from
his hometown across the sea— One could plot

the miles, but never the loops that bind life
after life after life to another. Now, dirt fills in all
the gaps; eventually, grass will border the marker.

Everything is the country
of childhood— a dented thimble,

your secret name embroidered
into the tufted loops of a terry-

cloth towel, the undersides of mantels
studded with pearls of drooping,

hardened paint. Let’s compare patterns
in enamelware and gold and white

Corelle; the blue speckled cups
you say remind you of chamberpots,

the flowered wreaths around each
plate. Months when the sky

was a nimbus of fog and rain,
drumming on roofs the map

of the known world to the farthest
edge: where it shuddered and fell.