Via Negativa

Perhaps because I know how salt
is paired with flame and flame’s a welt

that licks the skin with thorn and bone,
I’ve always loved what knows to fold

the piquant tendril in the sweet—
ginger with anise, torn basil with lemon,

the iron bite of bitter gourds lingering
long after summer berries have left

their juice and stain on fingers, lips.
Reptile-skinned melons blush orange

like daylilies at their core, and the moon’s
poor copper in exchange. Once, I spooned

a tincture of jasmine flowers and my mouth
transformed into an old cathedral

against whose rose-veined marble walls
sheets of candle smoke lifted, swirled.

Once, I slipped thin slices of the carambola
on my love’s tongue, so he could understand

how some stars burn greener in their
passing. Shake the purple rind of the grenadilla,

the yellow globe of the maracuyá— the audible pulse,
the ticking seeds: exquisite sweet, waiting to explode.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

We drive through neighborhoods to look
at houses leafed in dusk-light, noting which
have corbeled windows and which

have shutters turning to the river,
where the sky has tinted the waters mauve
and wading birds touch the current

lighter than a skimming lure.
Is there a walk edged with green,
leading to a door of beveled glass?

Is there a span of yard
where old leaves on the evening
primroses graze the fluttery

new leaves on the witch hazel?
No one lists these other views:
the curl of chrome around

the refrigerator handle, the tiny
speckled orbs of orange scattered
across kitchen tile. I look

for your image reflected from
the shiny green side of a toaster,
listen for the future echo of footsteps

dancing up from the wooden floor.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

As if we knew enough to name
with certainty what creeps
dark-eyed under the canopy;
as if the sky were not
already overcast and cooled
by night’s long rains.
As if the arms of trees
did not hold cryptic
messages, letters
that lovers once carved
in bark for one another.
And so the scar:
shadowy fingernail,
sickle shape radiating from
the center of the breastbone,
as though a hummingbird
smote the spot and worked
in frenzy to perfect that one
eyelet: little god, hovering above
an altar of imperfections.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Like a letter someone writes in the early hours,
as rain turns all the windows to skin.

Like the ink that streaks across the vellum
surface, ending in a flourish or a dash.

Like the light that filters upward from the ground
as mid-day heat; or condenses in beads of sweat.

Like a blur, like a wing, like a shard;
like a face passing behind the shutters.

Like the sky that’s often mistaken for weather;
and the world beneath it going where it goes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.