style="font-size:15px;"> And a child is writing
his name in the flyleaf, under two or three
other names, the book already underlined,
half-forgotten. Write clearly,
write in ink, the teacher is saying.
AFTER THE MOON
eclipsed itself, the rumor of darkness
true, the whole radiant business
almost over, only a line,
an edge, like some
stray part of a machine
not one of us
can figure any more:
what it thrashed or cut, what it sewed
quietly together, what it scalded
or brought back from the dead. After this,
I came inside to sleep.
But it’s the moon still,
pale run of it shaping
the door closed against the half-lit hall.
The eye is its own
small flicker orbiting under the lid
a few hours.
Not so long,
bright rim,
giving up its genius
briefly, mountains under dark, craters
where someone, then no one
is walking.
A MUSICAL IDEA
At the second light, you turn, the boy tells me.
I turn. A musical idea. Turn then,
when a light in any house goes on.
Dark end of the day on the street. Dark
late afternoon in November.
In any kitchen—revealed: the hum
starts in the freezer, down
the lower shelves, takes the stove back
to its fire. The sink is an absence,
one tea-stained cup left to seed.
I live somewhere. But to walk away
is a musical idea. Because a corner means
make a profile to however once
you were. Once a child, I kept turning
full-faced into everything, never
saying a word. You like
to think that, my brother says. I heard you
plenty of times. And you were hiding.
OMNISCIENCE
To shrink down and not be small
but just to see again, he said
of the past, the past as broken mirror,
as weird-looking stick
because this was the woods,
halfway through the hike.
To refrain from the cheesy, the self-serving, from
knowing too much. That voice,
his again. So there were rules. But how can we
know too much, she said. Memory,
she said, come on, it’s all about
forgetting. Think of the things
lost to make that box
of odds and ends. They
kept walking. Somewhere, a real road. They could
hear it. He almost told her,
you’ll test me now. You’ll ask me
how long did it take
to hold a pencil, to write the word
fabulous or maybe just dog
for the first time. And if he
shook his head— See? she’d say,
see? I remember the fifth grade, he said,
those endless afternoons, don’t you?
Not one, she said. They got quiet, the river
on their left now, the water
too low. The whole world
needed rain. But she flashed
on that strange little
storefront in Oregon once,
the counterman saying: why, there
you are! I’ve been waiting a decade
for you to walk in here.
Then she was telling it, outloud, in the air. Probably
a pick-up line, he said. What
were you? 20? 22? Sudden click
in her head, a double take, two
exposures, one picture,
the first shock of it back
from the photo lab:
and here I thought
it merely some brilliant bit of the novel
my life was writing. Did they pause?
Because
