Via Negativa

“…The brilliant days and nights are
breathless in their hurry. We follow, you and I.”
~ Lisel Mueller

This is a story about time. But when
is any story not about time? Who knows
where it really begins, or how?

The important thing is that the message
finally gets delivered to the king.
And everything is of course a metaphor:

each piece of fruit the beggar has brought
every day as a gift for ten years, the guards
that throw it into a neglected store-room

and chase away the one who patiently returns,
seeking audience. And then the day the king’s
monkey intercepts the gift, breaks the dull

brown pericarp to reveal the riches
within. What can the poor soul do but follow?
In the wood is a corpse hanging from a tree.

The branch does not break, but every footfall
sinks into its own shallow grave. His task
is to carry it on his back, deliver it.

The corpse tells stories, poses riddles,
threatens death. Imagine: the minute the answer
passes the king’s lips, the corpse flies back

into the tree. So it goes, this task
of rolling the body’s stone forward then back,
forward then back, until one forgets one’s name.

How many trips have I made? I’m listening
still, trying to figure out how to answer
paradox without breaking silence, how to sever

the contradictions that faithfully dog my steps.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

It’s almost spring, and I am putting
a large box of things together to send
away across the ocean in a container ship
with many other boxes just like this one.

We call these balikbayan boxes— and we
fill them to the brim (they’re packed and taped,
not weighed, by volume) with every imaginable
first world desire: chocolate, clothes and shoes

bought at various sales throughout the holidays,
books for nieces and nephews; coffee, processed
ham, brined and pressed into teardrop-shaped tins;
liter bottles of shampoo, purse-size samples

of scents and lotions and oils; candy, pain-
killers, cans of tuna and corned beef and Spam.
Strips of masking tape and markers help
to designate which items will go to which

relatives and friends back home. I know
that what I really want to send can’t fit
inside this cardboard box— And so from time
to time I’ll stop to lean against the kitchen door,

survey the goods strewn across the table:
despite the labels, unsure of their destination
as I am uncertain of what real purchase
I have over the things in this world.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What had he saved, at the close
of his life, that he might have left
as a bequest? We found out only

after his death: despite his long
career in law, how scrupulous, how
fraught with superstition the lengths

he went to avoid the writing of a will,
or such grave considerations of the end:
a bank account his widow had no real

knowledge of, with one last retirement
deposit; the neat and mostly unused
stack of blank checks (he favored cash)

tucked in a corner of the sock drawer.
Somehow I can’t remember more
than the questions that now come

out of that time. They crowd upon
the present, which today seems
cloudless and untrammelled, clear

blue shot through with loose coins
of sunshine though winter’s breath
suspends its shadow from every branch.

If you can’t take it with you, what is
this lifetime of working and making do,
of putting others’ needs before your own;

and nights of sleepless worry, counting
the days from one paycheck to the next?
The clock in the hallway whirrs

and hidden levers scroll the hands
across its ivory face. Its music
is also a counting-out, a measuring

of the remaining distances between
the ache of all that wants so much
to be fulfilled, to be disbursed.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Buttonhole: wound, opening trellised over
with such careful stitches. If the edging
is even and well-spaced, and the knot hidden
from view, the garment is practically knighted.
Tell me about frog closures, keyhole backs,
pin-tucks that seam close and sigh open;
the patient work of the foot, the hours
pressed on the treadle. Romance of voile,
the pragmatism of cotton, the tensile
wisdom of wool and lace. At the mall,
trendy with mirrors and mannequins:
a thousand blemishes sparkle, but
everything is hungry for more.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.