where tired of crossing
ready to say
keep the fire
wanting only to keep this skin
unburned for a little while
the last one yet to scar
to blend in with the rest
ready to welcome a long
rain with the imminence of
threat no longer in the foreground
even if of course always there
but yes, let us plan a return
to refraining here is peace
with no one asking whose
Long gaze, rolled tight.
On occasion we would notice it was possible to feel nearer to the ancient untouchables of distant tongues, then know them out of reach. Was there a time when the myth did not begin with broken parts? We could not say, knowing only heroes against horizons, shells shattering into light then back to dust––but first, another genesis. And then, and then––
Head on bed of moss before battle. Song. Oceans rising into dream without rest, yet the eyes still lift. Up and out they go, flying off.
But it was possible to learn to wrap the long gaze tight in folds of worn cloth while folding what was freshly scorched from the machine, to bring them up again to sort among the boxes and all still left unsaid between unseen and seeing.
This. Morning.
Sunday morning sky
and spotted details
of the last blast
photo of plush toy
bright against rubble
these folded cat paws
beside me the careful
soft of fur and the babies
and the sound of no sound
when questions about next
are done
dawn / what seed is this
what bird
what howls
A triptych.
Morning light dissolves the purple of early clouds still pliant with possibility. There the dog, there the hand on the head of the dog, the other gripping Styrofoam cup. Sip as the steam moves through. A ship comes in. Another is loaded. Voice from the dock: thirty minutes.
Later, past the southeastern hills, screen door rattles over porch over wet grass under grey-white sky. The flies start early. Your creaking chair. The freeway hush constant as ocean now, and this used to be horse country.
Down to the park, child in grass to feel a spinning planet at her back, trying to imagine the sight of us and all of this at a distance. Up and up, here is time and here is space but where do they connect? Shiver of sudden pulse at the small of her back. Her mother calls, Baby. She calls, it is time.
Saving in time.
As the weather changed, we noticed. Each wind carried voices. The thing to do was pretend not to hear what they whispered through slats of our thin plastic blinds. There were other things to do. We started with food. The impulse to offer. To the living. Vestigial? Maybe from a time when time was still immune to the clock and darker months meant scarcity and their coming meant harvest and the thing to do was save what had managed to stay living while it grew.
Something like memory.
We wanted Time the wound-dresser, but he lurked with a shiv in his sock teasing us from a dark corner, what is it now? of the hour. He bet by our faces, adding wouldn’t you like to know?
We were lying to know, nodding hard and he was anxious about maintaining the image of getting somewhere.
Space sucked her teeth, said I see you, but he needed his records and was always asking what we wanted to do. He meant to appreciate some facts of being here together, but needed an agenda to fill his reminders, warning this is what you need.
We lacked the right answers when he quizzed us but kept first-aid kits. He would demand these sometimes, just to check. We could be career knife-jugglers and not run out of gauze but then he caught us one day, with Hawking’s Brief History and insisted there was more to him than she thought. Meaning our mother.
I am not what they make me out to be, he insisted, pointing at her. I am no straight arrow, no line, and Space laughed, oh, we know, baby, we all know.
Inside this.
and so you look
for an edge so you can
press against it and find
the end of you
it was not war
or gravity
more like Jonah’s whale
or what left you
open-mouthed beneath
the sky the reverse
actor expunged
from the belly that held
you in the world and now
too small to take it back
inside you
On being here.
Plant the crab in the sky. You must do this regularly, every season. Now the archer. Pay attention to the bull looking back and follow the gaze of the frog. Notice the tide. Tonight, it glows in full bloom and the cat snake dives gold into wormhole. Follow the fish where it echoes you back. Give recklessly of your abundance and hold fast only to your name. May it tether you to what may never be pronounced. May this be what keeps you, always.
Notes between walls.
there you are again moving invisible
singular purpose whisper the dream
listen up record this now no map
but a chorus in flight there are some
who record the songs of birds at the brink
before they go
like that before they left they moved
away from their feet into cars over rivers
of steel then asphalt
rail spine a direct line but not quite into sky against it somehow
the pressure to bear the witness so often
asleep at the wheel all of us so 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
it was good sometimes
to live in a time when you
were finally removed from the pretense
that it was possible to acquire anything
the anti-aging lords of war had secured
the borders of every new frontier we
had only to be here living to learn
the ancient art of passing through walls
between times and passing each other
we would nod beneath breaths this
single phrase our code these times
we said these times as
though to remind us back to
all of them you had to feel all
of them at once or else risk forgetting
how to move
anywhere
or ever
On goals.
to sail the lens
as a boat over
open seas at
midweek
unfurl wings
kissing wind
was all
you wanted but
there was no place
for a need so bare
the ache behind it
an incorrect response
in the land of the sure
