I had nowhere to go to, nowhere to
hide my shame, no means of protest when
the waiter returned and served us sweetly,
set the coffee before me, and the only way
I could ask is a veil any better than a chador?
was to say, simply, Dankeschön
Belonging
Name a place: even the sounds
tell the tale. And gravity, distance, distort.
The stars over Germany in winter swung the whole sky
northward, past the clay tiles around my rooftop window
I could lean out and watch a cold dawn blot them into day
Hawai’i was nothing but sun or rain or vowels, all
a matter of light, cloud, dirt, wind, blue and green
We learned about places impossibly far away
Stars, when they came, spilled wider than the ocean
Somewhere they shone over other places
over you, over the Dutch flag that I was convinced
was that of every nation, even over the dark wake
of the midnight ferry from Oostende
the crooked finger of the Chesapeake
that surprised me from the plane. Home must be
where I tend to, the tongue I am understood. Its weight
changes the shape of everything, each tale telling
every sound, every place in one name.
process of conversion
1 impasse
they wanted me to conduct Second Waltz
for a high school orchestra class
and I thought one part went in 3/4
and one in 2/2
and the sign for the time
was the symbol for infinity
everything disorganized
and last minute and late
looking for parts, stands and chairs
I don’t recall even beginning
2 epiphany
on a ship on an icy sea being “chased” by an ice floe
and you didn’t know if it ended as a shipwreck or not
and I was thinking “I am so tired of shipwrecks!”
3 breakthrough
I was instrumental in saving the government of a small African nation from overthrow by two women.
4 taking stock
Photographs, and
digging in a park in a depressed area of France
with a boy and girl, and we uncovered beautiful
mineral stones in labels, but who had thrown them away?
5 orientation
A rock musician, hugely popular
wore nothing but white
even his hair
“He was different from the others
because when we told him to die
he did, and was very happy.”
6 perseverance
We kept running into members of Dave Matthews Band,
and someone told them about the book. One of them said
he wanted to see it sometime. I was flattered, I didn’t think
he was serious. I was in my room reading when he suddenly
walked in and said “Well, where is it?” and I thought
“Oh gosh, he really wants to see it,
what have I been doing?”
Ursa Vestiarii
the bear got out of the closet
it had been rattling the doorknob
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