Sing your small, insistent note in the cold,
in the fields: each intake of breath lined
with frozen asterisks, pathway winding
through the hearts of dead trees.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
A Carol
What’s there to be so worked up about? Is it
an upset stomach, a crumb of moldy cheese,
an underdone turnip, a ponderous chain
that clanks with every careworn step?
Let the snow fall amid the stenciled
branches, let the winds swirl like spirits
whose coming is always foretold, but who
cannot linger. They’re here, they’re here,
they’ve never left. They watch us who weigh
everything by gain, point to the shadows
of things that are yet to come. Curse
or blessing? May you be happy in the life
you’ve chosen. Remember what passed between
us: clear, bright, cold. I know this place,
this tune, down to the last mince pie and dance.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Landscape, in the Aftermath of Flood
This is the way it often is, after calamity:
sudden gust of quiet, or spool of open air;
a few hundred feet of nothing. Nothing moving,
nothing doing, gray stasis of between-one-thing-
and-another. Until: closer view of the aftermath—
human figures daubed with mud, pinned under the ruins.
Did you not move quietly? Didn’t you take care not
to rouse the gods, or the duendes, or the anitos?
When you passed a large outcropping of rock,
didn’t you keep your head down? Didn’t you stop
short of teasing the makahiya into folding up its
leaflets? Didn’t you whisper, pagpaumanhin po ninyo ako?
Pray that the river does not rise again, does not reach
its muddy arms to take you in your sleep. Whole
cities have just gone under. When the wind bears down,
every frond bristles with the recent memory of voices
calling children from supper and to bed, singing
simple lullabies, saying Yes, tomorrow.
It’s all you can do to keep from giving yourself to
oblivion. If not for taking the living in your arms.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Morning Song
Because I dream, I’m told my punishment is that I should always be the first to see dawn arrive at the edge of the world. But ever one to question the edict handed down, I demand proof: why punishment? Today it arrives in darkness, like a soft grey scarf of pulled fiber. So fleecy it seems the animal still breathes softly in its tent of skin. Rain ripples along its sequined flanks. There’s enough light soon to see how it noses into the day— and even when light floods the porch, fills the hollows like tea poured into cups, quilts the wooden planks beneath the window— I’ll always have the echo of its first muted sound in my ear. Tendril wound through my hair; small whisk of breath: I love your ambiguous arrivals. Reminder of what might leap into flame, thicken into honey, should I rub my two hands, stone and flint, together.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Song without Strings
Today I want to remember, but remember
beyond mere recognition. To break
the chain that holds the gate in place,
that keeps these soggy woods soggy
under a ponderous gray sky. Where
is the props man? Have him haul up
that sky and lower one in a more
pleasing color: multi-flora. You have
no idea what it takes to sustain
this effort, to remember (I carry
four flesh stumps held to a piece
of gauze by the silver prong
of a safety pin). Tip the bucket
over, let the little stippled fish
swim to the moon. Take it back,
clean its insides of kelp
and constricted tissue. Use it as
a cup from which to drink today
like a woman who isn’t a mother:
just a woman, just a girl who wants
to sit in this chair with no need
to get up real soon, who wants warm
light to love all of her back, who
wants a sip of cold clear water.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Santa Milagrita
Here’s a heart cut out like
a cookie made of tin, ringed
and pierced with holes: through
it, the light shines— like
ornament, like a bauble wrapped
in foil. Its cold fluted layers
gleam and pleat, like the halo
of a small town saint who’s made
good and come back to a hero’s
welcome: so many tokens at her
feet, so many supplicants in
parade. The traffic never stops
at her wayside shrine: bring me
back my lover, my daughter, my
mother, that life of promised
ease. Here, in exchange, all
these glittering anatomies:
fingers, arms, legs; an eye,
an ear— parts we would lop
off gladly; if only, if only.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Song of Snow
And I have tasted salt
and blood’s iron bite,
the backwash of tears
mixed with bile; and I
have known what humbling
mouthfuls of sacrifice,
what burn of years and
their slow toil down
the gut. So let me now
taste new-fallen
snow, dissolving un-
complicated on the tongue.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dark Prayer
May the screech owl’s wail fetch you
out of your hiding place, and the crows’
black ink find you and mark you.
May your left hand pluck and pluck
at the thorn in your breast and may
the right hand stay it. May your bones
drift far out to sea like a ship without
bearings. May you stride over the hills
just like you used to do, vowing never
to return; may the road make it true.
May the child’s call in the house
gone quiet, be nevermore for you.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Recover
“…I’d just like
to put my head on the pillow
while the storm still rages, and rest.”
~ Richard Jones
They say it’s quiet in the lull
of a storm, in the heart of chaos.
There are pockets of air in the dead
center of a piece of moldy bread;
and a shiny speck of copper where
rust and oil have not worn down
the coin. There are at least two
spaces between the gecko’s calls
—enough time for an engine
to sputter to life, for flame
to spurt out of the match; for
the faltering wheel to right it-
self, as it goes down the path.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Call and Response
If the woodpeckers call
back and forth to each other at
the wood’s edge, why should rain
not come with the gecko’s call?
If the seeds of sorrow are sown
in the moment of joy, where are
the explosions of joy on the horizon,
from the multitude of sorrows sown?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.