Via Negativa

Everywhere is a mirror, if you care
to look: red porch floor made glossy

by wind-blown rain, hummingbird
hovering over its surface. Round

soup spoon skimming, dipped
beneath to snare a disc

of ginger, coarse ruffled leaf.
Your eyes: across these bowls

of cooling tea, dark irises
enclosed in softer brown. Late

risen moon: careless coin, forgotten
wish tossed into shallow water.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

It started out simply, a game
of little questions as she ironed
a stack of laundry in the afternoons

while I colored pictures at the table
and rain drew circles on the windows—
What would happen if you went to school

and discovered you’d left your lunch
and had no money in your pocket? or,
What would you do if you came home

and the doors were locked, and no
one was here? I don’t remember when
the hypothetical problems became

more difficult to ponder, or if my mother,
pausing in the rhythm of her labors,
considered the metaphysics of these

further tests. Next, she asked questions
that seemed to be about other persons,
say, the neighbors next door: What

do you think would happen if one day,
you woke up to find your parents
had died? I’m sure it was only

to prepare me for the difficult
uncertainties of life, to begin
to teach my mind to cultivate

the detachment which comes
of acknowledging what it can’t
ever control. I can’t remember

if my dreams were suddenly
clouded with locusts and plagues,
if blood bubbled upon the waters;

or if I ever saw in them the angel
of death waving a sprig of rosemary,
walking on the grass and passing

beneath the trees which trembled
slightly, even those whose leaves
were toughened by a long summer.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

We get up to rain and fog; or rather,
smoke— the swamp still burning

in the month-long aftermath of
lightning strike. Not even a hurricane

could put it out. Whatever else one
might say, it is a form of dedication.

Name your materials, then: peat and fossils;
ethyl alcohol, grains soaked and swirled

in a silo of glass. Little clutch of wood
shavings; cone of paper, puff of breath.

Coals in a tempered dish. Some light
to take you past the midnight hour.

At a conference many years ago,
a Persian poet I didn’t even know

looked at me and said, Your stomach
is tight; don’t try too hard.

And it’s true. Don’t we want,
so many times every day, to unclench?

The world looms close. Only look up
at the brilliant fall sky

and the silver gleam of a plane
glancing off the buildings.

Somewhere in the woods, a bright
clearing where a tree came down.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Glyko Karythi: Green Walnut Spoon Sweet [Greek]

What falls, will fall of its own accord
because the season dictates it— acorns
and chestnuts on the ground, leaves now
beginning their russet plunge. No sword

needs to sever the filaments, no word
except what blows, mostly unseen, through
the late hours. Sometimes the light thud
of a globed body: hard green pear, gourd

bitter with unripe longings. Fall’s rewards,
we think, are tinted scarlet: apples, late-
blushed nectarines we gather, moving from tree
to tree. But also the rough, raw, blurred.

A stinkbug on the railing drops, not quite unheard,
to the porch floor. The seed’s housed in a shell
that cracks to metaphor. I marvel at how walnuts
packed whole in honey were once hard, uncured;

but yield all, steeped long in sweetness, complex art—skin,
flesh, bone you could cut, clear to the wrinkled heart.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.