Go, my small
illuminated hope
the color of snow,
the color of light
beneath impossibly
flayed limbs
of trees.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
If this, then
When the wind carelessly picks up
leaves that have so diligently been raked
off the lawn— is that the breath of God,
or merely the exhalation of a less
powerful machine? When the asterisk
in the middle of a form says you
have to start all over again—
is that the voice of destiny
telling you to go home?
When the figure of brittle glass
that used to sit on the mantel
turns out to be Made in China—
will your grandmother’s ghost
mourn its desultory drift
from one yard sale to another?
It might be time to snip the strings
that fetter fact to the ideal: spores
velvet the surface of bread, and leaves
speckle with rust-colored blight. And in
the river, the wading bird has dipped its head
for more than an hour without any reward.
In response to Via Negativa: Pulling strings.
Dear constellation of which I am only
dust traveling with the lightest of hopes
on the outer fringes of your periphery—
please explain how it is that every
deflection overcomes me; and further,
how it is possible even the tiniest
injustice could wound with the weight
of entire galaxies. Who was it said
we spin in space, cold and apart,
edges not touching? I choose
not to believe, unable to separate
flower from myth, the symbol from
its stem, every small trembling
that only wants an accounting.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Forecast
“An oyster’s/ answer to a tear—” – D. Bonta
Mothers called out from high windows to warn
of the cold that was coming.
Men turned in the fields, swiveling their blades
and pulling one last knob from the earth
to drop into a sack.
At the farthest edge of the ocean, a single wave
higher than a mountain trembled in the breeze,
awaiting the first icy shock
and its fatal splintering.
In response to Via Negativa: Pearls.
Fable
Everywhere in the heart, country ravaged by famine, there are columns of dust where there used to be trees and promenades. Nothing leaps in the fountains but a suicide of bees. Somewhere its ruler is asleep, or does not know how to wake up. The elders consult the oracles, sacrificing their last few bones to produce instructions for breaking this curse. This is the only possible reason the heart accosts whoever comes near: it wants to know who is willing to travel beyond the ridges of the self, to stand in vigil thirty days and nights never once closing the eyes to sleep, until the bird of paradise comes to roost in the branches of a tree. Its mouth is a parasol that wants so dearly to be a song, in the same way sheets of hoarfrost on the ground want to turn into yards and yards of silk, their sheer gossamer slipping like water through the needle’s hundred eyes.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“Ask me the time and I point to the sun—“
But what of the shadow
dear to the sundial,
or the moss that lines
cracked patio tiles?
What of the breathing
of fish through winter,
and the rushes that carpet
the bottom of the pond?
What of the flowers
whose white throats open
only once, before folding
back into themselves?
In response to Via Negativa: Proverbial (7).
Roll
In the Book of the Dead
I write two names this morning
that they might be remembered
even by those who did not
actually know them in life— Looking
over my shoulder, in the church foyer,
my daughter points to the second,
saying Was that her name? I nod
and say it aloud: Cresencia. And she sees
and hears three clear syllables— lunar
body, grandmother shape that slips
briefly into the arms of this moment.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
This is neither beginning nor end
In the well of glass around the front porch light,
small remnants of wings: soft brown, dark speckled,
then turning to ash. With each rain, their smudge
more closely matches the verdigris on the copper frame.
Like letters I started but forgot to finish,
they are always about to arrive.
When the wind skims the roof lightly,
sometimes I wonder which wing is tapping.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Chronography
Walking in loops around the church and the school this morning, after everyone has gone in for the opening bell, I think about the purposes of repetition.
A quilter gathers scraps to make a granny square. A fisherman has his knots.
In this, too: the acts of naming establish small differences in field after field of sameness, establish some kind of love.
The alternating blocks, the formal abutments. The slip and the halter and the noose.
Centuries ago, who first thought to observe time by the way stars crossed the meridian?
What is the name of that bird who makes one small flick in a flag that ripples?
I marvel at their subtly changing color as they all wheel and turn— one desire and its cream-colored underbelly, subsumed into the inaudible machine.
Within the drawer’s lined recesses, the gold watch that no one has remembered to wind.
How far has this instance drifted from universal time?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Taste, See
How can I forget the night
you roused us all from sleep,
coming back near midnight,
some dinner party with local
politicians, journalists
eager for the opportunity
of an open bar— You
pushed aside mosquito netting
and scooped me up, brought me
to the kitchen to taste
take-home treasures none of us
had ever had before: turtle eggs
in clear stock, slippered tongues
of abalone on a bed of greens.
Especially because I was young,
I was not to be spared the lesson:
that it is most excellent to ingest
as much knowledge as one can,
of the untold riches of this earth.
What did it matter if such a feast
was never to be had again?
Years and years later, ailing
and on the verge of tears, moved by
an emotion for which you had no name,
you pointed at a drawer which held
the things I would need to make accounts
upon your death. There, beneath the pile
of your good socks flanked by a neat
stack of pressed cotton handkerchiefs—
what logic justified this pairing?—
your savings passbook with its dwindling
rows of numbers, and a roll of unused cheques.
I am sorry, your eyes said. Did you
not realize how well you taught me? My eyes and lips
still smart but I know how to open my heart to eat
whatever the world brings to my door.
In response to Via Negativa: Marrow.