Imagoes hatched on thin ice, it'stheir illusion membranes are brighter
than occluded flesh of interiors
Membranes have the density
of an edge, and edges violent as lava
2
All day she walked across the tundra
He began to drive away obliquely
at exactly her speed, so she altered
her angle, aiming above him, as in a current
He departed in a zone that solidified
at his whim, so she reached for his hand
Land cracked with their weight. He seemed
to reach toward her, a hand like paper
twisted and folded over, only a surface
with wan modulations, like a map
3
Then she delicately stepped out
toward the edge, tenuous as a leaf
as if waiting for a letter
but it froze too swiftly before her
At dusk his voice broke her concentration
She turned, vexed, and saw he had not spoken.
from The Field for Blue Corn
3
Certain colors are the conversation
we held one dusk, that altered
from the violent afterglow of fresh bones
to the gray corolla of old ones, only minerals
As restless matrices in blue sage dissolved
a horntoad ran under a bush. I insisted it was
a baby bird. Then a baby bird and a horntoad ran out. Now, on a hill I never noticed between two close ones we've climbed, I see at an altered angle. Some small shift in refraction has set the whole plain trembling and hostile
4
I wondered if seasons were invented
by our brain, which is maternal, to soothe
chaotic events, since no springs here
have been alike. Moths swarmed the elm tree
one year, and bees the next, so I thought
it was the teeming, but this year is dry
austere, an anatomical drawing of the heart
taken from life, inaccurate and scientific
Branches without leaves over bare ground
pretend to reveal everything. We revolved
around ourselves as if we were central, the way
the earth was, which is not, like this plain
sun lights between the Taos Mountains and Jemez
Now, move a little to the west. Seasons are
an amulet against the heartbreak of things not unique
dulling loss by flowerings, the columbine
that died back. A rite of passage is the first
winter, we need to survive meeting strangers
as pulsating light and not explosions, the way
a flower, as “the culmination of a plant”
expresses its seductive intent
6
Color is an aspect of the light on a face
and on the pale gash of a washout in the hills
like spans of window glass on winter sky
The hue of vapors is revealed through a filter
of clouds with soulful articulation. We see
blue shadows on peaks normally glittering
with snow. I learned the palette
of diffuse days. Positive tones, finely altered
are silence and distance. In curtained rooms
a pulse beats in prisms on the floor
Other days one goes out adorned and sunburnt
All the more precious a veined wing
Undiluted brightness is an aspect with heroic
edges, in spite of common immersion in sun
as from the lover's face, veiled or aggressive
along a large but rhythmic wave. As with
land, one gets a sense of the variations
though infinite, and learns to make references
7
Please stay a little longer, at least
until the garden is turned, our old whimsical
siege on arid land, where I have seen snow peas
and columbine, even though not inert growth
Extra effort to keep a flowering vine as it is
entropy, is locked into our memory, since
we'd naively assumed flowering was natural
A sprout against its seed coat is the first
battle, after the one with air. All the seeds
seem to fall near the enemy. If I have failed
to grow herbs in a knot, as in English gardens
some motley hardy ones may take, and buckle
the topsoil with incompatible roots. Please
stay. Help me pace out the field for blue corn
If a winter has seemed to pass as only our shadows
on a rough wall, weren't they blank and rough
as apple petals blown over and over each other
