~ after Lesley Wheeler Is it one syllable or two? When did I (you) last really speak to you (me)?
Distilled Sonnet: Longing
Volunteers
Later that morning, after borrowing
the neighbor's ladder to pluck an errant plant
growing in a corner of the roof's
front gutter— I decide to also clear
the weeds tangling the mouth of the downspout.
My other neighbor across the street
uses the word "volunteer" when she's talking
about plants that show up in her tidy
garden as if from nowhere.
A stand of curling fern, for instance—
which she didn't put in the soil herself.
Or wildflowers she kept
because they were pretty,
and closer to the sidewalk's edge. I'm tempted
to ask if these plants know what
they're volunteering for: you know, like many
citizens in the community
who've signed up to be poll workers, even if
most of them are over the age of 60 and understand
they're in a group
more susceptible to contracting COVID-19. Young
people too, properly masked, armed
with clipboards and flyers, going door
to door, reminding people how important
it is to register and vote in the coming
elections. And the volunteers stocking community
food pantries, the school children fanning out
across public parks and beaches
to collect trash thoughtlessly tossed
by others in the bushes or on the trails—
This is where, often, someone finds small
animals: turtles, possums, seagulls,
herons, ducks, their heads caught in plastic
six-pack rings, legs wound
in plastic twine. As for migratory birds
that have been seen
falling out of the skies across the south-
western states in the hundreds of thousands,
I don't think they freely offered to take
part in their own mass extinction.
Between raging wildfires
and unseasonable cold snaps, how long
did they reel through the sky until
they couldn't, until they hit
the ground, reduced to feathers and bones? When I
find under the rosemary a bird's narrow skull
of mottled ivory, it's not so much the brittle
hollows of its eye sockets or the wanting
to know whether it was flycatcher,
swallow, or warbler that comes over me
but that there's still a softness
in the hinge that used to work its bill.
resetas*
4 there's likely a reason for why you might read ginkgo in place of gelato, anger for ginger, wound for word— the air tips the hourglass to the other side as if everything could begin again: the mouth remembers the child's thumb; the shoulder, her homesick head— what you want to know is which of the vowels you sounded never stopped ringing in her ears even as she fell asleep * prescriptions; Tagalog
resetas*
3 observe deep silence in the hours after moths congregate someone brings a bowl of water, a candle, an egg the soft scritch of a match signals the beginning of rescue you hear it from afar like a hammer striking an anvil you were on the burning plain or in moss-curtained forests you were at the place where the sun stuck its coin in the poor-box gently you pick up the soft body folded across the path you put its arms into coat sleeves, its feet into your shoes * prescriptions; Tagalog
resetas*
2 raven-blood, dog-blood, heated just below boiling the formal ceremonies of owls after dark salt pearl, rice pearl; bud from a particular time of year old love, a lozenge dissolving slowly under the tongue smear of red earth and water, controlled uprising of bees prayer summoning what you exiled, naked, to ice or snow lie down and let the hands of the ancestors rove get up as a lioness to shred the sheets you soiled * prescriptions; Tagalog
resetas*
1 cut out the dead herb growing spirals inside your chest inside the sour plum, find a seed with the initials of god see how the mouth hungers for the unwritten century collect, if you can, the honey left by ants on the road in the morning, run and unfasten the gate to the sea keep the first feather that brushes against your throat with the second, make a tincture of eucalyptus and gin don't join the crows in heated discussion of headstones * prescriptions; Tagalog
sintomas*
4 the hair: its toothed iron sheets, its lacquered walls the elbow: its never-gloved, stair-stepped midtown tunnel the ear: its widespread auricle, its tin cup held out to the ocean the hip: its switchback curves and wings; its carved, vacated cradle the muscle: its wild-haired resident tailor with deteriorating eye the ankle: its heeled oscillations and dreams of immortality the brain: its limbic planets, its wells of desolation and nostalgia the skin: its fires and disasters, its basement telephone exchange * symptoms; Tagalog
sintomas*
3 the thigh: its speckled landscapes and faun-like moods the tongue: its love of idle industry and minor angels the throat: its splintered caves and hidden rivers the cheek: its aches, indecipherable from engagements the forehead: its balconies of constant dreaming the nape: its squeamishness and fear of wooden blocks the arms: their pale whipped froth and custardy insides the groin: its marshy bogs and and mists of gasses * symptoms; Tagalog
sintomas*
2 the nose: its diving headfirst into wind, its lift and flop the chin: its love for hammocks, its pyrrhic aspirations the vein: its unsteady arrows in single lanes the eyebrow: its cliff hangers, its plein air sketching the philtrum: its silence concerning the wisdom of the world the suprasternal notch: its quiet alley, its nest of fallen birds the bladder: its muffled trumpets, its watery bleats the hand: its genius at picking locks, its open softness * symptoms; Tagalog
sintomas*
1 the heart: its palpitations in molasses and vinegar the liver: its hooded falcon and perforated clouds the spleen: its doubled fists and banked fires the spine: its naked chandeliers and broken lamps the mouth: its one red dress and oyster bed the stomach: its allegories of milk and vellum the ear: its copper clocks and restless constellations the eye: its fenced lagoon and roving windlass * symptoms; Tagalog