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Keepers

After Jorge Luis Borges

You forking paths, tongued by seekers
who pose over volumes, boring into our flesh
read the sins of fathers in our pages, see
me a harlot waiting to happen, a hope unleashed
are binding us––feet, knees, waists, necks
you stitch the skins of us tight, fisting the pages
certain you know what you’ve read, certain
you know us, that we may unleash what dreams
may come to the unfettered flesh, unbound, to
understand the soft-footed silence, treading near
my unshed pages saved from the burn, awaiting
language to make ourselves into all that you fear will––
?

*
The first word in each line comes from a sentence in Andrew Hurley’s translation of Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” (“You who read me, are you certain you may understand my language?”).

Okay, day

Onward

Not every boon blooms from discovery of that magic elixir, except where coffee is concerned. Most are patched together from dryer lint and mended hems and insufficient bites of apple in the car and the dizzy-sick of last night’s back-to-school sleeplessness as the next sun sets. It was a good day, Mom, says Babygirl, well past the afternoon tears. I am a mess, she says. I hose her off laughing in the dark and leave the rest of the mess in the car, set the alarm, hoping to sleep soon. In a few hours I am up again, straight to the coffee pot, with food to the cat in the morning dark, saying Okay. Okay, day. Okay.

Echo

In an aftermath

Maybe what lasts after endings is this
wind as song stripped of technique
bells as sound of fallen leaves, light
a riot of color, firing life–––––––
and stars as receivers who curve
long necks of shine to hear each
prayer in context at a distance
to reveal how this planet for now
at any given moment still pulses
with these voices of us reminding
us please–– and dear–– and help––
beyond the beyonds of this all.