notes nearing an edge
the pressure to bear the witness asleep
at the wheel all of us far
from the valley
who becomes the river
start somewhere I meant to
listen I meant to
hear you as you left
the land I meant to record
at least your sands running out
take this—we say of the body—
the opening notes of each of us in turn
going fast act fast you have to give it
all away
mistaking the voice as capable of hearing
Hello?
Hello—
It’s good to see—
It’s me! Let me tell you about me.
Yes. It is you again.
Whom I meant to welcome.
Around whom I now cannot breathe.
Your voice filled the room before you entered.
Your stories, hungry as fire, asked to be fed.
I mistook the smoke for mystery.
Sometimes I miss the kind of silence
that didn’t need my attention
to exist.
view from the updraft, suspended
The bones had to set when we broke them—
we set them in ash after each burn,
beside skeletons of former homes, still smoking.
We needed new cells to grow. Hold still, they said,
teaching how to manage the waiting period.
They meant faith—but without the work
it looked half-dead in our mirrors. We listened
for wolves. We saved their prints in boxes
for someday—for sorting, for display. But what
do you name the waters rising high enough to jump
to the next roof, hoping that one holds? Other questions
scratched outside us. Siri, what do you know of shelter?
It was something to do; knowing you had no service
didn’t stop the need to speak. We reached ready
for the next ledge, and she might have said, You can wait
until dark. Siri, we might have answered—I believe,
to heal our unbeliefs. The ghosts before us pointed next
and up ahead. We had begged to see it. But one wing,
caught in the updraft, suspended—still looking back—
It was the wreck we marched from. It looked away.
We looked away. It was possible, then, to keep wishing—
merrily down a lane to the land of the dead.
Tracing its thread against honey-slick tongues, we offered
first milk. Some kept their breasts bound for harvest moon.
And when it came, there would be blood, and money—
enough to say: we’ll be okay another year
until time
comes to pull it back again— the sun
of our once
and future sons.
on the other side of the wall
For coral to take
the long-submerged chains,
something living
had to cling.
On the dry side of the wall,
someone asked
what the babies were eating.
No one answered.
Another question:
Did their eyes look back?
But who
are these
circled moments
in the widening arc?
Look.
Down.
What moves—
low,
ready?
A body bends
against sorrow,
unsure which world
it woke in.
The bars
held only flesh.
What else
we were sometimes
slipped through.
a theology of attention
In 9th grade English, we had a fairy tale project.
My hero was the youngest of three princesses.
Unlike her sisters, she wasn’t especially smart, or strong, or beautiful.
She only knew how to look and wait.
The plain-looking, unremarkable princess found an egg one day,
by the banks of the stream where she used to go for long hours,
to breathe in wonder while she sat.
There was no nest nearby, as far as she could tell.
There was nothing so striking about the egg.
It was small and brown and plain—larger than a quail’s,
slightly smaller than those of the palace hens.
She picked it up, wrapped it in a handkerchief,
and walked it back, carefully cupped in her open hands.
She kept it warm, and it grew—into what, I can’t remember.
But it wasn’t a bird or a lizard or any of the predictable
reptilian-amphibian-avian creatures that come out of eggs.
It was beautiful when it hatched.
And what it revealed at the end was the power of her waiting gentleness,
so far removed from other attributes.
Since then, I’ve sometimes questioned if there might be
some pathology behind this sort of thinking—
but I was raised on fairy tales,
Hollywood rom coms,
and a worn copy of The Lives of the Saints.
So, it’s likely impossible for me to discern
with any reliable level of objectivity.
When it came to imagining the thing inside him
that was more or less invisible much of the time,
I liked to picture it as something almost too fragile
for survival in the wider world—
like an egg outside a nest,
or the tiny flame of a birthday candle.
Easy enough to snuff out,
but it’s all you need, really,
to start a blaze hot enough to roast a pig,
or scorch a hillside. Or to smelt iron—
which was the better metaphor, as far as I was concerned.
I’ve always been partial to the idea of love
and patience as shaping forces,
when applied with a deft hand.
“Dreams are like that,” I would tell the students.
I thought about calling them mine sometimes,
but in their lives they were their own selves—
which simply were, with or without
any influence I might or might not have
prayed toward or against, in weaker moments.
This is why you’ve got to keep watch all the time—
against wind, infection, suffocation.
They are always dying, losing face,
forgetting what they are
until they are nothing but trace whispers of light
in place of something that used to burn
a liquid dance.
Round with promise
like a wet pear.
