What you notice in a morning.
Sometimes you sit here over coffee wanting to address these birds in the tree limbs just outside, each fluttered wing an aria unto itself. To say to them, sing me and know they know you mean it, how you want to be home already, somewhere. And hear an answer well enough to let you finally weep to see it.
In the late days of long wars.
We wanted to mend, so kept company with our mothers’ ghosts. Our yesterdays were wounded and came to us until every bed was full.
O muse. Your song was bleeding out.
We brought cloths and went to you. We wrapped you tight and held against the flow. It entered then.
We are still, holding.
Regarding nearby deaths.
We would smell it sometimes, just outside, beneath the porch. Once we heard its scream at midday. We were in somber clothes with serious faces, lining at a wake. To pay our respects, we said. Until it called us out.
Still, each of us held our private reserves of deflection. We flexed budding wings beneath dark clothes, planned our escapes. We dreamed in altitudes, had ideas about the next to go. We watched for drape of eyes over landscapes and their shine at recollections of near brushes. These almost always involved driving, when the rush of speed before it ended promised to finally know its peak.
Regarding the ongoing restoration project.
And I watched another raging hero with the priest, disputing the last claim to spoils of war––at the end of another bloody year, another daughter’s ransom, and the muzzled prophet muted, and I know you sent your heralds, but their words were weak against the noise. You said I had to learn to let things be as they are, but who was I to untie myself of every assumption inherited at altitude? Even the clouds are flying now from the weight of this constellation of atoms, held fast while the widening day goes on, denying all assurances that tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow will return from the place where it flew off right now, to somewhere past the sight lines, out of reach.
And a turning point.
In the waiting room, I wanted
to say–––something, because
such places, with their anxious hum
always seem to want relief. From
the pretense of containment,
or into song. But when it was time
I left and the hot wind hit
my eyes which slid across
folded falcon wings as if
to learn how my own hands
clutching plastic bags
might know that poise.
A nest nearby, its swallow
gone, a lilting plainsong
behind me. I turned, eyes
wide, to trace the mouth
of the storm’s long suggestion
in the ears as though to
blow me empty. Howl,
I wanted then, as now, to
share some sighting
with another face.
For want of wings.
Before the feathers fell, a morning star and six moons gone. But still, the golden chains, the prayer. O bird in one hand. May you not be killed by the stone in the other. But the exile was long and the cliff just high enough to launch himself home, son of suns, into light. And the light, in recognition, danced to see him until it took him back.
***
Inspired by the story of Icarus.
From an undersea expanse.
It started above ground. Then we
worked the present’s peace, as
the storm and life went on until
the whole story was underwater.
The lens moved to track the current,
the coral, its choral lives. The lens
was intelligent. It saw us. We
looked back, our entire lives
before us, now beyond speech,
the brave vessels of our knocking
hearts still moving by the word.
We held new names inside us,
hinting at what we were and to
what we were being returned.
Down we went. At last,
there was no time before this
but our remembrance, and some
would make trespass of memory
holding it close, would hear its
first utterance in the water, like
Mother even now, in
this constant dusk the day
still breaking in my–––
But she said:
Hush,
don’t speak to me of
souls. Not here, at this
late hour. Only hold.
Unicorn in love (Beyoncé cento).
Ten times out of nine
––I know,
If I were a boy, every girl
––in here
circulate
the image.
Cliché on his mouth
like liquor
––who wants
the perfect love
story ––anyway
I got hot––
sauce in my bag,
swag.
Wax on? wax off.
Now I’m even more,
––lost.
You won’t break my––
pictures snatched,
out
the frame
why can’t I keep––
my hands off?
Eyes,
when I put on
show me your scars.
Lord, forgive me.
I’m stingy
with my love
won’t you hold on?
To me,
I was here.
***
The above is a cento composed entirely of Beyoncé lyrics.
To say the word.
And you said to me, go back
and I returned where you told me
to myself, the soul’s eye looking.
The awe of it, and all of it unknown.
But I wanted solid things in space,
a place to own. I looked long and
it was true, then. There was no place
to rest this head.
You said the word and it left me
and I am locked away now, far
from that mother, that tongue.
Take me back.
***
Inspired by Augustine’s Confessions.
Willing continuance.
I will.
I want––
For you, I do.
I want to will
––something, until
you know it is for you
and here –– hear
and will yourself –– and will you?
Child, take it.
