Via Negativa

Once, we dreamed of walking 
the famed Camino, pilgrimage 
covering months and miles through 
parts of Portugal, France, and Spain; 
ending at the field of the star where 
the saint is buried. It could even 
have been the honeymoon we never 
had, since after we married, a winter storm 
bore down on Chicago and we wound up 
spending the long weekend with our guests 
in a time-share rental whose dining table 
was still strewn with crumbs of lemon
poppyseed cake and edible flowers.
But we are no longer young, having spent 
so much of our lives working for the where-
withal that gave us this mortgaged roof 
(shingles rattling above our heads in high 
wind), that made it possible to put children 
through school and pay various doctors 
for our ailments. How curious, this word
which means with or by means of which 
a thing or outcome might be procured,
typically by financial means—a compound
of adverb and preposition followed by
a suffix indicating condition or state.
The Milky Way, in legends of the Camino,
was made of the dust raised by pilgrims'
feet. So many souls walking the paths
marked by shrines and scallop shells
in search of penance or of miracle, 
the exhausting labor of each step 
a ransom for their requests.
 

"I shall not lament 
the human, not yet."
                          - Dorianne Laux


A nematode wakes from forty-
six thousand years of sleep. So
long buried in permafrost, it loses
no time and straightaway starts
producing babies. Under 
a microscope, it resembles 
a figure eight unwinding 
from infinity; a silk sash 
looking to tether itself
to something more than 
the icy silence of a tomb.
There are times you feel 
like you've come back 
almost from the dead 
like that—certain you'd 
promised not to give your 
heart again, not to leave it  
in the open like a slug 
tempting a scattering
of salts. Is this a weakness,
a fatal flaw hardwired not
in the brain but in the gut?
Mornings in summer,
waiting at the train station
a few blocks from the bakery,
a warm wave of milky scent 
rolls in on the wind. You think
of the child who hasn't 
spoken to you in years 
now, the mother you couldn't
return to the earth with your 
own hands. You teeter just
a little on the brink.

It was hot; I decided to stain three
       boards newly replaced on the deck,

their ghosts having rotted through 
       in the center, along their length. 

But the heart of the tree is still green
        even after it's hewn into lumber—

meaning, it carries a hidden store of
        moisture. Combed from a forest

holding rain, enveloped in humid
        shawls of fog, the heart of the tree

does not die easy. I can't tell what the birds
        see: the masts of a boat, the rungs of

a ladder, a quiver full of arrows? What
         is anything, before it dies in place.

I collect the leafing 
of paint loosed from siding,

the inner lining of a box
that held a chime.

I watch a crow flaunt
its blue-black coat 

and a silver moth fanning
itself by the door post 

Sweetness bursts
by degrees out of the skin

as the sweet potato 
roasts in the fire.

Here we are again. A cold plain
of silence, a clinking of dishes
for accompaniment.

They come at later intervals
now, but still they come— as if
the bare trees filling with the dark

iridescence of grackles aren't 
enough, as if the fields strewn 
with headstones and weeds 

aren't loud enough.
It feels like we've just arrived
yet barely know how soon

we'll get to where we're 
all headed. It could be any
day now. It could be an instant.

Tomorrow, next week, next 
year, or an extra decade later.
And what is a birthday?

In home recordings 
there's that moment 
between the light 

being dimmed in another
room and the moment when
the cake is borne aloft, a ship

strung with sparklers. Here 
it comes. First the hush, then 
eruption into sound. Remember?