and decoy to the blood’s
otherwise routine wandering—
Waking chimes, alarms

of bells are not as surprising
as what you will or won’t take
under advisement—

it is the small
and poorly represented
whose depositions you take,

whose counsel you prepare;
it is the jasmine shedding
its withered blossoms

that gives most scent,
all those night-blooming flowers
hiding their faces from sight.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

How can we be happy again, someone asked; how can we ever feel safe. The girl with the striped headband said, We can. I want to hug all those children who survived and tell them, I just know everything will be all right. Some of the people in the group stood under the far end of the dripping awning to smoke. It kept raining and stopping, raining and stopping, so there was nothing to do but go into the mall to watch a movie. When we came out, night had fallen. We crossed the grassy triangle and let ourselves through the kitchen door. We made dinner: garlicky chicken and rice in broth, a four day old loaf of bread split down the middle, buttered, quickly revived under the grill. Enough for everyone to share. Who was Tantalus? I heard someone ask in the course of conversation. There was ambrosia involved. Stolen nectar from the gods, which in my childhood was the name of a sweet rolled up in colored cellophane for the holidays, dense with citrus and dates and nuts. Punishment, always punishment— for giving in to desire and snatching what the body said it wanted, needed, wanted. The mouth being only the first passage. What the branches bore, gold and sweet and heavy— What the water offered to quench the hot little fire in the gut— The question is always: Does anything ever completely satisfy? Run for it, I want to say. Yes, run with that broken-off branch and the purloined sweetmeat, run even now and celebrate the brightest flame you can find to share with others huddled in the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

~ Octavio Paz, “Sun Stone”

Tear at the wood of the dead cherry
all you want, my little frenzied ones.
Tear at the bark of linden too,
reduce to rot the peeling wood
in the neighbor’s gazebo; flay the ivy
to pieces, sunder the jasmine from
its vine. More things than these
are inexorable, more hungers sharpen
their tongues than the points
of those fledgling spears. What is it
that you want? What are you looking for?
The wind loves all surfaces, not just mine.
But we take down the deck chairs anyway,
we fold the beach umbrellas, we board up
the windows against the coming storm.
How did it come to be that resistance
is in such gestures, and not in the willow
bending its crystal leaflets to the water,
not in the bird that petrifies the forest
with its singing? The wind, yes, the wind:
it is the song in a burning building, the sidle
of a sigh along the throat because I held
the sound of your name too long under
a skim of water. I give it up to the air
again now, I turn my palms upwards as I
should have done. What else is there to do?

~ & with thanks to Lila Shahani for the Octavio Paz reminder

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

you walk into the empty kitchen where all the dishes lie, stacked
on the drain board, dry; where one chipped cup spells longing.

The light is newly rinsed, newly risen, or just fading, but
it doesn’t matter: every hour hides a secret longing.

The colors of fruit are warm and full of life: citrus yellow, apple
green, cherry red. The blue-veined bowl opens its mouth in longing.

Who was it that was supposed to come today? No shadow crossed the walk,
or rang the bell; no face peered in the window to meet you and your longing.

You sit writing lists, checking papers, figuring costs—
By the door, lavender in a pot sends up tiny spears of longing.

At night when everyone has gone into their rooms, the ceilings
hush, the shutters turn, as though against a long-held longing.

What’s on the other side of so much longing? Surely the bird
that lined the nest has found some arbor devoid of longing.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

like it to be light not

light like that light

coming in the window warm

morning at last but light

like a billowing unseen

without any sail

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

back to a world when kings and statesmen of new
empires leaned over tentative maps unscrolled on
library tables. Their pale, excited fingers traced
the zig-zag journey across months, across a chain

of inked islands to some vaster expanse where the sun
might, conceivably, never have to set— And their
sailors: how different might they have been, really,
from these young men in optic white from Brazil,

Colombia, Ecuador, standing at close attention at the foot
of each gangplank as tourists nervously find their way
up or down, one foothold at a time? Those conquests
might now go under the name of history: the ones

that launched Magallanes’ ships toward some idea
of the spice islands, so that today, every grocery
store in the northern hemisphere has whole shelves
listing with fenugreek, coriander, and anise,

and salts in shades that range from white to pink
and grey— the ones that gave the archipelago
of my dreams and birth, the name of a Spanish king.
Sailors climb the masts and fly the festive

banners and the crests signifying their own
native origins. And after all, this is still
about territory: the way each boat’s carefully
berthed, the way we move from one to another

as though to test or bring tribute, knowing
the waters that slap against each hull can be more
jealously coveted— for oil, for nutrient life,
for passage to safeguard into that uncertain future.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

All morning in the Triangle, the workers are setting up tarp, small platforms, brochure holders. Tall ships will ride into the harbor tomorrow, white sails unfurled.

Out of the blue, the landlady writes to ask what the backyard looks like now that the cypress trees have been cut down.

I snap a photo and hours later, notice that moss has grown between the bricks on the walk. There is no error here.

In a book I come across the words romantic dogs, penned in the margins. The handwriting is unfamiliar.

Dust filters down in the late afternoon sunlight. The blinds need cleaning.

I cannot remember how many funeral parlors there were between the City Hall and the church.

A stand of pampas grass gave me my first paper cut. Green against gravel. And then the surprising streak of blood.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.