Via Negativa

Derecho, Sp., adverb: straight ahead or in a straight line

Near the end of his life, incontinence had become a problem for my father. Out
with the driver one day, he gripped the seat back and rasped, Derecho, derecho!

What he meant was, Drive back home, straightaway— and our driver had the delicadeza
to turn around, never once making a comment on fluids he passed: no stays, derecho.

Early on, in Geometry, that’s what we’re taught: the shortest distance between two
points is a straight line: chalked stripes, taut strings of floss: derecho.

Do you know the tailor’s trick of a string wrapped around your wrist? Doubled twice,
it gives you the circumference of the neck. Plumb line in the body’s grasp, derecho.

In the trees, some raucous wrens engage in a kind of relay: touching bills,
passing a winged morsel. How will they share such a small repast, derecho?

At the clinic, a woman flings a chart to the floor and sobs. The doctor interjects,
but Don’t beat around the bush; give it to me straight, she gasps: derecho.

All along the southern corridor, people are picking up debris from the storm. A dark
roll of violent wind, they recount. Hail. Hundred year old oaks tossed by the derecho.

We cleaned him up, hosed down the seats in the car. I coaxed socks over his ankles.
All doors open to the wind, the body’s hinges unloosed at the very last: derecho.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Through the window by my desk, I see a poem light in the branches
of a tree. It roosts awhile, then leaves— Night heron, ascending.

My friend thinks it an omen for something good and rare. I regard the question
mark of its neck and back, its feathered cap streaked with pale saffron, ascending.

Last season’s big storm flung a nest with young herons to the ground.
Perhaps this is one of them, out of the rhododendrons ascending.

In The Conference of The Birds, what fate befalls it as the flock undertakes
the journey? A blur past oak, ash, and willow; past reddened crags, ascending.

From that height, boats are specks on the water, and we, even smaller.
Which dark craft at the river’s mouth is Charon’s, swiftly descending?

In this summer light, some things look struck by gold: mythic, emblematic.
Portentous spirit, wings outlined with neon— tell me of ascending.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The gap, the space, the state of neither here nor there, the hazy interval that
hasn’t quite revealed what it contains: it makes you want to read between the lines.

A bridge suspends across two spans of earth: a flimsy thing, woven of rope and slats
that rattle when we walk. We do not need to peer too closely between these lines.

Space yawns beneath, drops deep from blue into yet more blue. Behind, perhaps
the generosity of sand; ahead, the unparsed trees to read between the lines.

But I grow weary of traveling to and fro, of leveling the way then finding it un-
tenable when I’ve turned around. Hard work: deciphering between the lines.

How hard is it to understand what the heart really wants? The body’s feathered
with nostalgic veins resembling lines. Listen hard, read between each line.

No, the butterfly exploring your palm with its proboscis isn’t necessarily
a symbol for anything else. You cannot read too much between the lines.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The gauze of
dragonflies
along the river’s
edge: for now,
the only footnotes
to urgent bulletins
on sea-level rise.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.