In response to Via Negativa: Self-criticism.
Storm Watch
All through the night: wind
gusts that rattled.
Agitation of limbs, leaves
that hinged and sifted.
Deck furniture that banged
against brine-soaked wood.
I could not sleep so I made myself
a sandwich, I heated water for a cup
of tea. With every knock
on the eaves I listened,
wondered at the strength holding
mitered corners. A window
banged; and up the street,
a gate blustered open. But I knew
it was really the clamor
in my heart for which I listened.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Luck
is like the Tour de France,
that blur cycling past at full
throttle while underfoot
in the square, the pigeons
peck at messages in the gravel:
Where and When? Quick, hurry
and cross the street, duck into
an open doorway or the train station
before it rains, before the downpour
carries us all away.
Sonnenizio with a line from Donne
Sweetest love, I do not go
anymore into dreams that are sweet with meadow,
where wind is sweetest tinged with salt from the sea
and sweeter, upland, where the dead sit wrapped in gauze
and prim as ladies passing sweets at afternoon tea.
And, sweetest love, this is why my exiled nights are spent
planning a sweet escape of my own, into the grass
where first you sweetly took me, then further afield—
the body that aches now not as supple, not even as sweet
as it used to be. What sweetened syllable could bring
the flush of coral back to the throat, sweet mottled shade
on the breast of the bird that sweetly sang and fledged
too early in the year? Sweet pang of sometimes rue: I knew delight
felt sweet and right; then woke, marked by the aftertaste of flight.
February Elegy
Sparse snow that falls and falling,
leaves on my dark sleeves the lightest imprint
of stars— how long would I need to stand
in its fickle weave to make
a white scarf wide enough
to cover my head, this grief?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Timeline
In my childhood home, the time
was always kitchen time: breakfast
o’clock with islands of egg
bobbing in percolated coffee, batons of steam
from the rice pot at noon; angelus of stew
and rounds of amargoso. Our daily stations,
measured in steps between broom closet
and kitchen sink, hollow drum that stood
outside, gaping wide to admit
the rain whenever it chose to come.
The roosters scratched then rested, rested
and scratched in the backyard dirt
under coils of the chayote vine, under the dull
grey skillet of sky which shone in patches
through newspaper-rubbed windowpanes.
In response to Via Negativa: Music Lesson.
Ambering
All day I thought about a question
I’ve refused to answer for many years,
its shape now fossilized as if
in amber: its origins disquiet,
its aim to settle. It’s grown
into a thicker shape: layers
that one could peel away and wind
into a ball of thread to span
several football fields, an island,
a continent— really, a length
that might be equivalent to the time
it took first to plant it, ask it,
hold it; then set it adrift in what I
did not know then, as I don’t now.
In response to Via Negativa: Fossilized.
Maternal Villanelle, with a line from Eliot Khalil Wilson
“I fear the natural
aptness I have
to any cross.” ~ D. Bonta
Beauty is the way we are broken—
what price to pay, to leap over obstacle
after obstacle, bringing proof of our devotion:
for isn’t that what’s required, especially of mothers?
We waited outside schoolroom doors, exchanging notes
on every beauty that would be the way we were broken.
They said it would be harder for those who didn’t
really want to compete. Soccer? Ballet? Spelling bee?
Every triumph and trial, supposed proof of our devotion.
I wasn’t the type who wore suits or pantyhose and chokers,
or knew my place, or did not complain. Though I was made
to understand beauty was the only way we were broken.
But there were other sources of breaking: they hurt
because their lights burned brighter, out in the world
beyond the merely domestic, where sacrifice was devotion.
To this day I ask myself if there were choices
that could have made some things easier;
but we love beauty and beauty is the way we’re broken
—this is how we’ve proven our devotion.
In response to Via Negativa: Kenosis.
Mission
“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope.” ~ Job 7:6
Today as we lingered in the commons, a lady crossed the hall and came to sit and chat. Thank you for your family’s help with the charity dinner, she said; every little bit goes such a long way. The orphanage now has a clinic, and the school is doing well. There are more teachers, there are plans for a plumbing system though it will take a year or two. We are going to visit this spring, and again before the end of year. Only when we come face to face with the poor do we see ourselves for what we really are. She said she too was raised in an orphanage. You would not know from her careful speech, her aristocratic bearing. And then she took up both our hands in hers and kissed us on each cheek. I caught the faintest smell, like marigolds. Before she disappeared into the rectory she adjusted the flowers in the vase by the double doors, pinching off the droopy heads and bearing them away.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Mile Marker
How do you do it? I want to know how you put them all through, how you worked through the fevers and chills, the scratched knees and spills, how you found any time to sleep or brush your teeth or sprint to the store or pay bills or make sure everyone got their due. How do you do it? I want to know what you did when lack was the only thing that came through, when the promise of finishing turned into a vapor of dreams. How did you do it? How did you cross over from deep in the valley and across that forbidding range whose sides are sheer and whose crests are covered with ice and snow— How did you do it? I want to know what you did when you couldn’t stop what was coming, when bridges vanished and signposts pointed only to rain and more rain. I want to know how to breathe when fog shields the road, how to get to that spot in the middle of the park where the bench or the swing looks over the water and the buds spill like moons on the stones.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.