Month: September 2024

Soundings

and wave

What is the opposite of the way we floated in that space, where it held us in that singing silence, drifting to and from? I don’t want to say it. Only that when we approached near enough, we gave names to one another. It was a way to hold and pass between us, all that reflection and depth. Later came a noise to shatter that silence, and we stopped passing names. I may forget my own, soon. Or the one that held me floating, more than mine. I make this feeble note, unsure if I can sound it anymore. It is the scrap of a decimated raft. I hold it, something between here and that endless down.

Not Within

But without

It appears that it has become fashionable to do what some practicioners call “focus on gratitude.” Which is, of course, a universal good. And yet, so often there is something knee-jerk about the reaction, a compulsion that makes the effect smell like Febreze™ sprayed into a filthy room.  Or, at the risk of mixing metaphors, putting a bad paint job on a wreck. Maybe this is because of the well-meaning speaker’s insistence: I have––, I have––, I have–. In the face of any loss or disappointment, this can certainly help. But it is something else entirely to admit to having nothing. And then, from the position of that hopeless wasteland of wrecked person, to meet some other peace.

From the Book of Survival

To hold the gaze

When they came for the silence of our sacred
hiding weapons behind badges, the guards
by way of greeting, shouted Speed! planting flags
in the flesh of our flesh

When I passed, I saw where you had waited
beneath those windows, hunted bodies, and our light
along those points of fracture where it shattered
before cracks from our seeming solids in the dark
went –––where everywhere we look
there we are in pieces––

Palms behind us, trembling–––shadows across carpet
past our feet and the racket of the voices absorbing
those parties of projections, leaking to and from.

And after the cries stopped, we held our gaze.

***

Adapted from Flight Songs (2024, Finishing Line Press)

Lover’s Prayer

The art of doing nothing

In the silence of satisfied (although perhaps guarded) anticipation of victorious arrival, one spoke. Wait, said the one. Let us be sure that we know what we are doing. Many laughed.

In the deepest dark, a body will not recognize its own fall. This is protective. Who wants to know when they are downer than they seem? What follows is total upheaval. An eye opens.

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