Strangers on the porch.
After the brimstone men were gone marching, the women gathered on porches and in kitchens near us as we played, and sometimes we would sit at their feet and in their laps, pretending not to listen to the stories they told as they rocked back and forth, pretending not to wait with any hunger for the moments when they would break into laughter, and song.
***
Inspired partially by Rhiannon Giddens.
At the usual times.
The ordinary breaks apart, but in so many versions that it is endlessly ending into astonishment.
I can’t believe this, we say again, and keep on.
Morning notes.
Early, in darkness, listening for a chord to shine the sunup. They say there is water below here, an underground stream, roiling currents of it, unseen. Nothing about land makes it separate from that knowing, from the air. I wait between breaths and it enters again. This land, before I leave.
An interruption.
Listen, the wing somewhere upstairs.
The sound of a cry still seeking a mouth.
How it flails behind the closed doors
against tease of glass pane
trying for sky.
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.
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 what may shine.
That you may one day know a lens not terror, a posture not crouched, sounds neither siren nor drone, and weathers unrhymed with death count. Food to offer, not to reap, and time as a ladle to be passed to the tune of Here, take it. Take what you need. Did you get enough? when no host will rest until everyone is so full that they lose the count, numbers blurring back into beginning, and no one thinks to save the light for when it leaves us.
