through your
through your eyes
the web of dust in the toolshed at the bottom of the
property where the solitary one
sat long ago in a back corner against the rotting
joists
staring into the shadows of the rafters
the smell of rot piercing sweet
like the gull decaying on the levee rampant
flaring into the earth
smelling of the earth your mother
whom you have never known
Contents
1
Dazzling.
Light from every compass point.
In the outback at the edge of the frontage road the sky opens like a long-clenched fist. Offering a suddenness of generous blue and constantly changing clouds. Or reaching out to sternly grab someone’s hand. Or pointing to an error in a serene-looking notebook. Or about to slap someone’s frightened cheek. Or …
Are we ready for the next lesson have we learned anything from the last. The eyes blink rapidly they can’t take it all in. Frozen watching. Waiting. Vast perspectives on all sides. There is no end to the horizon.
Who is in control here? You or you or you? Someone overtaken someone taking over. Surprised as the egg of the lark spiraling up to nimbo-cumulus imagined from inside the shell… .
You are unseen but guessed at.
Shh, he’s finally sleeping now, leave him, let him sleep, go, go …
You think so do you let him forget. But he can’t forget. Ah where is senility when you finally need it… .
Behind the rivulets of laughter ice and the smell of sex the list of humiliations I went over each night before I slept.
No. Hosannas… .
A narcissus in a small clear bowl. Yes that.
On every side the boundaries were collapsing. At the time. The border guards stood like torches of pitch. You were drawn without your knowing it. Into the conspiracy.
The net flying beyond its reach. Adenine guanine cytosine thymine. Cartilage cleaver bone. Shell. Cage. Jail. Wings.
Into the tide …
O the astonishing novelty of dawn.
The screen goes blank with beauty it was so great a joy we vanished.
A spare swath of light crosses the hallway table. That!
Why we could never quite remember the lesson and so must keep repeating it.
The head has no voice only whispers furtive signatories to the treaty you made with the past. Hand-flocked mail sent to a blocked address and the cartouche that will not disappear from the monitor screen.
The solitary one moves across the bottom of the aquarium collecting trace bubbles rising from the oxygenator… . A glint of bluefish through the tidewater… . The air rising from two open hands… .
What you remember what he remembers is the pain in detail it cannot have been all suffering you reasoned why can’t I remember the happiness.
Let the door pull you through. As you approach the threshold you grow immense and slow never to be seen to attain it.
If esse est percipi you will not ever be.
As you dive into the shadowy heart of the rose. A cross fleur-de-lys on a banner. A tide of grasses moving over a plain. The boy not seen that day… .
I think he’s really sleeping now. His eyelids are quivering. Yes, of course, if you like. Stay.
Take the turnoff to Lock among the ghost towns in the hills beyond the city.
See the shadow of a condor. From April to November waterless earth. The sun nailed at noon. Creek beds smooth as.
The counterpane you can see it from above knobby with hill ranges like the knees of teenagers sleeping in the hot afternoon. A Cessna whirrs oblique to the horizon. Whistles sound in the burdock glen. The birds are strangers to me you announced. The keys clattered to the floor.
The peculiar range of sound in the country the chuff of tractors I could almost hear you from there. The exhilarating scent of compost. There were many horses but they were all silent. An open palm shining with moisture. The woods arched over me like hands. Pale as. Dark as. Thought of winter at the center of summer brightness. A daydream of snow. Flash of water skis an arm waving. The roar of the motorboat beyond the jetty. At the heart of the winter dream in the silence of summer the memory of other summers cocooned in snow. The taste of seawater. Everywhere… .
The soft hour of the sandpiper in the distance the pier that collapsed section by section over the decades but never entirely fallen.
The ship’s log lying open in the antechamber.
Coordinates in parallax psychopomps terns.
Whitecaps.
A thin layer of sand on the linoleum a bend in the tide reflecting the clouds. Foam crowns the shell of a horseshoe crab lying on the beach like the helmet of the fabled dead German soldier. With tail.
Retorts. Why
