Early exercises.
A memory. Of clouds. How they carried early poems. As if to illustrate some measure. It had to do with distances. The ones between language and aim. The ghosts were not deterred. They had seen it all. So long silent, they were done with all that, pushing out from the chest, up.
Like, Go.
Like, Stand.
Like, There.
Petitions, remembered.
We stood below it, whispering things like: One of these days when I call, I want to say your name and know it because in the beginning was the word and I want to go back there,
but I don’t know if she will have us––
anymore, such as
we are and–––
Then came the long wait.
What may loom, unweaving.
We wanted a story its magic in the key of longing notes we arced like stones from cliffs where we stood the key was carrying the eyes to where the magic was not. Years on a planet would spin us, looking for more of them to name. Here is one, an ordinary song, here is how you survive until the moment when you say back to us here is home and it cuts to remember between places so far full of dead heroes whose spirits won’t quit. We waited, unweaving the ritual to save ourselves. For tomorrow against this siege, and dawn keeps coming so soon.
And the rest of us, watching.
The jumping spiders are dreaming. You can tell because the babies have translucent skin. Watch the eyes behind it, back and forth. Notice the twitching legs.
What are they doing? One of us asks. The theory is that they are trying to make sense. Whatever they dream about, it may help them jump better when they wake. It may help with direction, takeoffs, landings. Which, we have to admit, is more than any of us can say about our spider dreams.
The birds are doing it, too, another observes. Watch the feathers, how they twitch on drooping heads. The sleeping cephalopods turn wild colors, sending signals with urgency.
What we are wondering seems uncouth to ask. But chances are that there is one in any given assembly who is relatively immune to propriety, so we wait for the silence to break.
Do you think they see us? Says the one, When they . . .?
No answer is forthcoming. In the next hush, we notice that it isn’t clear which answer we want. In the long quiet that follows, we sleep.
***
Inspired by Carolyn Wilke’s recent Knowable article on emerging research into the REM sleep patterns of various creatures.
At a cliff.
Say it’s a last day. Say the seagull knows. Say this is the explanation for that seeming pointed look where it stops just now on this eye-level post. There are these urgent clouds at the horizon, the edge of a tongue frayed toward song. Bodies inflected against the tide. To be washed, a quiet instrument waiting. If our dead watch, let someone play me now. That I may praise it, too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And the heart of the matter.
They come to see us, hungry for our size.
Look at our faces. We tower. They dance.
One says, walk slower. One says, closer.
There are more of us now, as though prayers.
Into clouds. No command is needed from this height.
They sing us. A dirge, they sing for beloveds
and the birds call back. From their ovens,
the smell of bread. When they taste,
they will look. Up, they will see us,
our suspended faces
against sky.
***
Inspired by a recent New York Times article about Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater.
