of
“Where Fire Comes From,” a Miwok tale
Hoy que en mis ojos brujos hay candelas.
[Today the candles burn in my witch eyes.]
CÉSAR VALLEJO “Los dados eternos”
Brenda, it doesn’t exist. JACK COLLOM
Conversational aside, Naropa
ARGUMENT:
microseasons, vowels, panicles, California grasses, existence, sex, the cosmos, childhood reading, guilt, noons, letters in summer fruit, autumn equinox, the stalk market, stemming the crisis, termites, winter electricity, the sixties, learning the y, solstice, spirits, wars we hate, motives, Candlemas, margins, spring songs, people with birthdays in May, Tesla, memory loss, deserts, Claudia & Don in the desert, summers in the Sierra, crosses in vineyards, the nineties, parents’ old age, codex, loops in consonants, drones, the body’s nerves, spoken bird poetry, candles in the witches’ eyes—these, my love, are made of fire—
TO SPIRITS OF FIRE AFTER HARVEST
Between earth
& its noun, i felt a fire …
—What does it mean by “i,” Mrs?
—It means, (& i quote): one
of the vowels in the brain
& some of the you’s—;
we were interested in the type of thing
humans can’t know,
interested in kinds of think animals think
—a rabbit or a skink! (Eumeces skiltonianus)
when autumn brings a grammar,
wasps circle the dry stalks
& you can totally
see through amber ankles dangling
in dazzle under our lord the sun
of literature—
Between noon & its noun,
there were ridged
& golden runes on pumpkins … bluish
gourds—in the fields …
(their white eyes lined up
inside)—Wait a sec. Please
don’t nail the door shut. The air is friendly
& non-existent as Veronica’s veil— …
Earth, don’t torment your fool,
your ambassador clown. Bring
the x of oxygen & sex, a fox
running sideways, through present noon—
SOME KINDS OF READING IN CHILDHOOD
Do you remember Picture Day?
Then, when the packets came back—
in each child’s eyes:
incomprehensible fire—;
you were ordinary,
in the sense of: the endangered west;—
your mother wiped the windshield
with a shredded Kleenex
(that’s why you deserved your oily treats)—
Inside the school, reading made sparks:
peril, peril, peril-&-awe;
outside the school, acres of signs
in cellophane noon, where
under the school, termites take
the tasty beams into their bodies—
[Incisitermes minor] delicate hairless arms …
Save the volcanoes for later,
flame-folder. You did such a good job
with the maps!
The world has created a sickness
but the sickness is being
reversed … Consonants
can be reasoned with, but vowels
start fires—now! breathing
twice: Now! Here come
the bandit occupiers:
silence & meaning—
THE FUEL OF AN INFINITE LIFE
You argue with someone at work. The chemical change
in your shadow meets the dry grass at the edge
of his shadow like an adolescent planning on
burning a field, or the love you wanted
to have later with another, the memory of what
your energy made before he began to speak.
It is impossible to discuss anything with your boss
because he has consulted the priest & they
will never see you again—; you stored that
in the chamber of geometric symbols, saying
to the wings above the granary, there is the fact
of the barren stalks, the pharaoh’s dream
of hunger, saying to yourself (a prophetic mute),
the hour will come someday for fire until
there are years of storing energy in these postures,
drawing circles with bones from the nine names
& lights that make words into sticks for
winnowing the shadows of falsity or ridicule.
Even the world, wide as it is, cannot exhaust
the fuel of your life when you are one of
