He ran away, skipped town, bolted the chains
that kept the rest of us rowing in the hold.
Soon no one remembered his many names.
Because he ran away, skipped town, bolted the chains,
all deeds declared him dead, erased his number and his names.
The state will not forgive his ghost that saunters in one day from the cold:
no pension for him that ran away, skipped town, bolted the chains
that kept all the rest of us rowing in the hold.
Tapas Triolet
A tuber, diced and quartered, from the field;
an olive, green and pitted, from the tree.
When times were fallow, love was pressed to yield
a tuber, diced and quartered, from the field.
What one mouth sought, another filled.
That silver integer of fish that burgeoned far from sea.
A tuber, diced and quartered, from the field;
an olive, green and pitted, from the tree.
Groundbreaking
We went today
to measure walls
and turn the soil;
we sorted stones
that floated into
our buckets
from the well.
I thought it a good
omen that a fig tree,
copper-clad,
drowsed in the middle
of the driveway.
Tendril
It is the Past’s supreme italic
makes the Present mean—
~ Emily Dickinson, “Glass was the Street— in Tinsel Peril” (#1518)
My cities and estates are made of smoke
and poems, my résumé laced with ample
culs-de-sac. You must have known
I could not trade my mountains
for plains so desolate in the heat.
I longed for the absolving rain, erasure
of missteps: poor choices, my rush
to cash the currency before its prime.
But now the sight of any small
tenderness moves more than grief
that runs its salt into the soil:
a flower smaller than my finger-
nail bursts white upon the sill
then shrivels; and yet it gifts
its fragrance like a signature.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
What’s Written is Not Always What’s Heard
Once dressed in green, no hopes
fly south; instead they burn
their orange prayer flags.
*
The mallet and the string,
the shawm and the oboe. The single
reed that stirs when the water stirs.
*
And the cornets of brass, bright
relatives to the sickle: its rusted
bronze curve leaning against the wall.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Smoke
That trick we learned in late
childhood from a dare or taunt: to pass
a finger quickly across a spurt of flame,
lighter uncapped or taper lit— Enough
to feel the singe but not the burn. Next,
thin parchment rolled and tamped and passed
from hand to hand, communal draught
of dry ash, duff inhaled: one of us said,
It’s just like inhaling paper! —some kind
of picturesque notion in her head of how the leaf
now lived or moved inside, its spirit curling
around our heads like wreath or wraith,
bequeathing secret visions to new
acolytes, sophisticates.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Where forests fill in
as overgrowth and cover, some land
must have had to pay: villages razed
to the ground by war or conquest,
reduced to ciphers that won’t show
up on maps, much less in history
books— What persists is
what hasn’t been killed off yet
by famine, epidemic, or blight:
maize, perhaps; or the potato,
proliferating in more than a hundred
varieties underground.
And that myth of the forest primeval,
that paradise drenched in sun,
free of disease, with no hint
of even a little ice age
looming on the horizon? Stories
we’ve told ourselves to make it easier
to go to bed at night, to cull
from the pod the cotton used to fill
bales, pillows, eiderdowns; to justify
boat-loads of bodies forced
from some other shore—
Bargained for, numbered,
sold; tempered like tools
and set to work, indentured
in the ancient fields.
In response to Via Negativa: By-Catch.
Libretto
Brief outlines glossed
by rain: I haven’t yet
glimpsed my doppelganger—
Birdling hidden in leaf,
will you sing for me
your most stubborn note?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Amargoso
(Momordica charantia)
Bitter green,
instead of flowers
I plant you in the soil
because my father said:
Eat of the difficult to better
understand the world.
In response to Via Negativa.
Killer Instinct
The hive was many cells
multiplied, transparent
grid of bullet
casings—
Gone now, the wasps
that lived within
the window’s dark
recesses—
Pennant left behind,
dried strip of black
and yellow from
a jacket—
Partitions thin as paper:
don’t touch the barb,
venomous in the wall
of winter—
In response to Via Negativa: Provisioning.