ourselves
is air
Feed the candle
the gate
and your house
DEUS EX MACHINA
I guess if we get to be here today
and watch this movie together
it has all been worth these past thirty-odd years
it took to get here
on this Tuesday. In this city.
Is why I’m here. To know you.
I will compare knowing and saying
and tell of all such coordinates
that run together to the river replete with its ghosts
in this instance of talk.
But we won’t scuttle. Will we?
As it gave the first buoy of its name.
Friendship, so entire, so perfect
you will hardly find the like elsewhere.
Even if the buildings are all in disrepair,
please, don’t let that inform us.
It’s meant for us, to pass by that dogwood tree
in May as our voices carry into Thursday twilight.
May I keep this promise?
Along with those petals flaunting the new season.
Little pennants of time. Boundary stones
to be collected on the periphery, where I live,
and where I remain, so I’ll be here thinking of you.
Don’t worry. I’ll work hard. Places everyone.
When sunlight accumulates in afternoon.
A box of elderberry lists behind the alcove …
then description fails the reader and we
are left with only shapes and patterns. Still
a single leaf trembles on the breeze.
Emblematic, a lovely badge, serrated
and at peace with the day that has flowered
beyond the notion of our need.
Where the reader lists. The poet builds a room,
it can be small or grand depending on the tone
as in June her garden is real.
An intricate lace of affection to correspond
when wanting fails. Perhaps a yellowed doily
on your grandmother’s nightstand
like a tune, long off, played
on a toy piano. Clink. These lapses
from time to time fill hours and cars
on the highway. A room to include your ramble,
as well as itinerant interlopers visiting
from unforeseen lake districts—with its news
of festival lights and famous contests—
where the song dies down into rotting hulks,
trunks exposed at the sleeve of the shore.
These transitions or seams if you like
inform me. Water and land disguised as matter.
A carcass dressed and open for inspection
revealing nothing but process, lovely and
inescapable from our own play.
I was waiting behind the skene, worn,
ravaged from too many trips to the provinces,
too many performances, too many nights
accosted by the rabble. Some people got a lot a gun.
What makes you different? Show me.
Here’s a dime. Call your dead
and find out what they’ve learned;
having been too preoccupied with the house
and its metaphors and where
the objects would lead them. Too selfish
to watch out for us. Abandoned,
beautiful and wide-eyed, developing the tools
to maintain the glorious liberties we carry
in our hearts and pockets. Then something
else did come to stand in its place: namely you.
Which is where I’m going tonight,
despite the distance from seam to shadow.
For I am relative to your I, while
this page walks into my side, where
the sun sets. It’s a special light this.
When evening takes a sip off the din
of long endurance, becalm, be near me
always—book. So I and I and I we go.
Together under the elms. Won’t that be nice?
To watch one by one all the colors
drain out of the sky into our organs.
SONG OF THE DEN
The small heart
opens out
to meet the world
it carries news
of kindness
for there is only
this and
these
