Via Negativa

Years later, she remembered how inconsolably
the baby cried, how nothing could soothe except 

bouncing the mattress nonstop. She'd lock
both of them in the room, away from others

disturbed by the wail of misfortune issuing
out of the mouth of one so young. But was it
  
indeed misfortune? What of a life might have
pointed to its development, when the sound 

of a window opening or closing was not even 
a thing of portent? What is it we mean when

we say May you have a good life? Not that agony
might never visit your door, nor the wish you 

might never know the pain of monumental loss.  
Perhaps, only that you might live, despite.

Once, as I explained 
the difference between
tercets and triplets 
(three lines that rhyme),
a student shared that she 
was one of triplets. I joked, 
Which one of you is here? I think
it might not have landed; I'm not 
really very good at humor, though 
sometimes a thought or a word
comes to me that seems amusing. 
It's all in the timing, say some 
friends. I may not be very good 
at that either. I hope you 
won't take it against me. 

Yeah why not. Let's go somewhere in a dark 
automobile at the speed of dreaming, purpose 

or no purpose. Sometimes, like now, I get 
tired of pondering the sustainability 

of survival as a kind of heroism. How long 
did you say it took the Praetorian guards 

to deliver the heads of their tyrant masters? 
There are sons described as having faces

only their mothers could love, yet their mothers
(and even sisters) come forward to testify about 

the cruelty of these men. Can you imagine how 
that kind of rejection must drive them crazy, 

behind their mask of stony indifference? The world 
is no more theirs than anyone else's. Their kind 

of darkness, small and mean and selfish, is not even 
anything compared to that more elemental darkness which, 

it is said, precedes the time before the subjugated world 
tears off its blinders, so the pendulum can arc to another end.     

 

The stump of a tree cut down years ago, finally 
softened, has become host to mycelia

Sometimes the smell of grilled meat floats over these houses

On the news tonight, hundreds of dairy cows infected with avian flu

My eye doctor tells me the names of chickens she keeps— 
Betsy, Trixie, Daisy; one shares the name of one 
of my daughters

Mornings, just before my husband wakes me, I lose the thread of 
a dream

One weekend we buy a tub of pork blood; I wonder why the label 
is pork blood instead of pig blood but we will make
a traditional stew

I like "very hard" crosswords; they have interesting 
words like abscissa

When I slap a mosquito sucking on the skin of my shoulder, I wonder 
if the blood is mine or someone else's

We're all part of the same cellular network  

It is the year of the snake and some have taken power 
that isn't theirs  
  
Every spore, every bloodstained stone, every word we protect 
and won't give surender

Look at the moths that arrow night after night 
into basins of uncollected light