Series: Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

(after “Flight of Swallows Over the Field of Gold” by Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

“… [his] breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.” Job 41:21

What you are made to understand from
the beginning is that everything is winged—
not just the swallows scissoring the air
across the warrior’s bolero jacket, but the field
itself caught in the blue curvature of furrows
coming unfixed from the landscape.
Against the screens (are they sycamore,
are they birch?) at the edge of the woods,
and the ivory of the pennant which billows
from one end of the lance, who could tell
a gray tail’s flicker from the side of a nine-
pointed leaf? Even the beast’s glorious
vermillion wings unfurl, as if to say there
has been no shame in using such power,
subdued now under the calm gaze of the one
who has yoked the rippling energy of this
world, as if he could make it do his bidding.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What was that thread of music I heard just now,
what was the sound of my name, my secret name,
the one the elders bestowed on me in childhood

under the aegis of a spotted moon to confuse
the gods too generous with their gifts of fever
and blood and the blisters than ran up and down

my limbs like steps to their dollhouse-sized temples?
It comes back as the warbler lisps at the woods’ edge,
as the green-feathered trunks run dark with rain

so I think I hear old tunes on an upright piano—
my father and uncles gathered in the living room,
singing “Wooden Heart”, “Begin the Beguine”,

“Let Me Call You Sweetheart”, and “Besame Mucho”.
And the self that was me is still there, scribing
time under the bedclothes, fingertip to broken skin.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Cranberry, Sparkling Berry, True Red, Movie Star Red, Red Delicious, Sunset Red— how many names for these little tubes of pigment lined up on a drugstore wall? My older daughters and I come here to find a name for the color of our changing moods. In the fall we turn to russet shades, to nutmeg and chocolate and spice; in spring we might crave the fluttery pink of orchids, the softer wistfulness of mauve. But here we are on the precarious brink of summer— just like that pair of tanagers foraging in the rain, not two feet from the porch: though it is the male in his costume of brash red that trails the drab female onto a branch, and returns my level gaze. Of course it is the same old story all over again. The Beatles sing “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” and Mrs. Robinson lights her cigarette, rolls her stockings back up her legs. Elaine and Benjamin have barred the church door shut and are running, running away and into the bus.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Strange cries that filter through the fog
and trees: blur of goldfinch and raven wings,
loping legs of deer. In between these acts,
a silence which I color every now and then
with my own speech, or tears.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dear shadow busy in the nest under the springhouse
eaves, see how the bird feeds its young. A phoebe hovers,
bug in its beak, tail like a tapping foot. Oh industry,
ah marriage, that long list of errands unscrolling
with its own kind of fervor after days and nights in
the sunlit meadow— Is this all that remains
of desire’s candle that burned, its two seared
ends meeting in the middle? It can’t be so, else how
could I still quicken, years and years later,
to the unexpected heralds of warmth returning?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

City I once wore like a shawl
on my shoulders, the soft brown outlines
of your hills and valleys the first thing I saw
coming in at dawn on the lowland bus—
Where will I see again except in memory
such astonishing green, or the deep sapphire
of a sky outlining trees that push through sheer
outcroppings of rock? And it’s true, nothing
I’ve seen abroad holds a candle to this view:
early morning light glinting off rooftops,
the cry of bean curd vendors in the streets;
my children once, in their own youth, holding out
bowls by the gate for a taste of this sweet.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Mirage, to be reflected— from the French se mirer; from the Latin mirare

Who are you writing to?
Who are you speaking to?
Every question’s pitched

toward a you. Always I and thou,
though no one meets the face
I lower to the sink except its own

reflection glancing back
from the milky porcelain
glazed with water drops,

then glancing up again
through the curtained window
where the one green leaf

at the end of a branch
shakes itself dry and turns
into a hummingbird.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Ochre and sienna slashed by tremulous
strains of green— here is where the furrows
were gutted by the wheel. It turned as all
things used for purpose dial to the next
toothed radial: what is it about labor
that burnishes the surfaces it works
over or levels down? Change me,
I begged my beloved, I begged the trees,
the light, the river that never needs to think
about changing course; that must hear
but never knows how difficult to keep one
note sustained, aloft in the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Honeysuckle in the shade, the day’s
hot store of oils cooling gradually into dusk;

then unexpected rain: thin drizzle a screen
through which late sunshine sifts,

the kind of rain we were told as children
was the spray of tears from God’s eyes.

And the mingled smells of heat and coolness
rouse the blades of memory from their hiding places,

where the musk of your breath mingles with
my own. Each glaucous leaf of the bleeding-heart

cradles its perfect droplet of moisture,
and the air is full of questions. Sometimes

I cannot bear to think past them, to pry them
loose from their trellis of hope and doubt and fear.

The volatile tea-green smells of soap rise up
from the little drawer where I keep fragrances

among the linen— I take out just one leaf
of scent and give myself permission to loosen

the stays from their clasps, the buttons like stars
plucked at cost from their hammered settings.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.