“The obvious,” Charles Simic once wrote, “is difficult/To prove.” (“The White Room,” from The Book of Gods and Devils.) This is my new favorite quote.
Continue reading “Proof”
Marker
Hard to say now where a seam in the soil
marked the place where a row of villagers
with their arms tied behind their backs
slumped to the ground after the order
to fire. Someone has engraved a plaque
to show where something was raised
from rubble— But dark wounds petal
every patch of earth under stone
and gravel. Someone has pledged
a troth or signed his name in blood
at the base of a monument. Bird wing
or flag flutter? It’s hard to tell
when shadows lengthen and currents
darken: so many faces in the river.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Triptych
We buy the rice called Milagrosa
that comes in sacks imprinted with
a red elephant or a pair of fish.
Poured into plastic bins, it makes
the sound of steady rain, not
the soughing of wind in branches
laden with armfuls of snow.
*
Neighbors think they’ve heard a red
fox at dusk, its piteous screams carrying
from the rocks by the edge of the water.
Washing up in the kitchen, I look out
into the garden where night has fallen.
My fingers trace the oily film on a dish,
and somehow the air has eaten sorrow.
*
On shelves in the craft supply store,
alpaca yarns in watercolor hues. I know
a knitter in Vermont who dyes his threads
in bowls of Kool-Aid. I want the Arctic
Green Apple, or Aguas Frescas
in Tamarindo and Guayaba— colors
of shoots pushing up through murky water.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Walking Weather
1. England
I fall asleep early with the laptop still on, wake to five kinds of weather visible by turns through the net curtains: all-the-way grey but no rain; rainy lowering grey-yellow; blue with large scudding clouds; cloudless blue, bright with low sun; & now a smeary dark grey with wind. I shall wind a green scarf around my neck & go out.
2. Pennsylvania
Brightness wells from the new-fallen snow; the overcast sky seems worn & tired by comparison, like the face of a mother who has just given birth. The snow is a great muffler of sound, though it does squeak faintly under my boots. I’m a moving smokestack, emitting white clouds of breath. Just as I round the last bend toward home, my shadow joins me.
See Rachel’s photographic response: “Frost fur.”
“A great wheel of upbuilding and raveling”
A great wheel of upbuilding and raveling never stops, and at its dark center one verges onto another world. It’s rather like the biblical injunction to “pray without ceasing”—that is, to make one’s entire life lit with the radiance of knowing God, knowing a greater life and being more alive. Art is always calling us to a larger life, to other worlds…
Gold Study
What softens the light-
fingered distances?
Colors of citron and honey,
bare floorboards.
Quiver of windchimes
set off by light rain.
Surprising how so much swims up
through this crack in the cold morning—
koi trapped in golden resin,
lifelike, like breathing.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Words on the Street
Road Trip, ca. 1980
Zigzagging up the mountain road, wonder why
you see only sparse cover of pine— dry
xylem of plants that knew more succulence
when waterfalls cleft rocks and veiled our
vision briefly as buses veered close in their
upward climb. Difficult to fall asleep on
the six to seven hour trip, the driver’s
stash of Betamax tapes playing musicals or
Ronnie Poe and Joseph Estrada action films.
Quiet chatter and endless snacking,
punctuated by the occasional query
on how far away the rest stop is.
Next town’s not it, so another hour
maybe, before they let us file out,
list toward the bathrooms. Had I
known, thirty years ago, that meant
just a slab of concrete on chilled ground,
I might have been better prepared to squat,
half on tiptoes while on my haunches, pee
guttering in a channel from a row of women
fixing their eyes on the horizon. Au naturel.
Evening quickly masks the scene. There’s a pump
damp with running water where we wash. The driver
cuts up meat and drinks a cup of coffee. We eat.
Before getting back on the bus, someone sneezes:
a fifteen minute wait, as superstition dictates.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Return
A rock raised up
by the roots of
a wind-thrown oak—
nothing unusual,
just a dark red
chunk of bedrock
gripped by a trio
of roots with black
cracked bark—
I saw it had been
washed clean by
who knows how
many storms & still
held aloft, as if in
some parting gesture
toward the celestial
powers that did
the tree in, saying Here,
take your damn
rock back.
Aragonaise
“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.” ~ Bizet
Aragonaise (the simplified arrangement for piano),
by Bizet, from “Carmen”— I remember a well-thumbed music book
covered with pinched pencil lettering, the weeks it took to learn.
Did the nuns who taught us, drill frozen arpeggios from our wrists?
Every girl one girl in a blue and white uniform with a straight face.
From deep in the lilac, the warble of a tree sparrow rose,
grew a little warmer, coloring like a flame
hovering just on the edge of what little we knew.
It’s possible some of us could imagine Carmen in
jail, possessive lovers; seduction, jealousy, dark rage
kindling in the breast and nearby in the meadow, bulls
lifting their feet, snorting, ready for the charge.
My own instinct is never to give anything away:
not a hint of what I’m feeling inside, though
often enough it’s worry or confusion costumed
poorly by bravura. Ruffles, a rose, a skirt
quilted in deepest red. At the sweetest passage,
read the notes, play them like they’re violets about to be
surrendered under the hooves of the heaving animal.
There’s no way to learn that simply by rote,
understanding how things measure out. Years later,
veer toward this music again as it drifts,
wayward thread unhooked from memory.
Exactly how do you know when the song has reached
you, claimed you? When its naked feet stamp out the flame,
zero in on what it loves, dagger aimed at the heart.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.