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Even in winter
the ivy rampages
over the garden wall;
shadow below—
an old clay jug
appears through mist
ancient: abandoned Buddha.
In the window lights,
you are rapt in your housework;
I stammer out here
neglecting everything
except the tones
of vanshing winter light.
By the authority vested in me,
I transmit these strings of sounds
with their identifiable
patterns of starts and stops.
Your communication
with the outside world
will be temporarily interrupted.
Look away from windows
and turn off all light.
Hide behind heavy objects.
Do not attempt to reunite
with loved ones.
Tuck your head under your chest.
Touch your chin to your heart.
Measure your pulse in the
clattering of your teeth.
Raise your right hand.
Refuse to listen to unauthorized
rumors or broadcasts. Place
one foot on a yellow circle
and the other on blue.
This message is too complicated
to transmit in its entirety.
Remain calm. Don’t lose
your head. Right hand, red.
The ladies asked us to leave
the room while they prepared her body;
the kitchen floor was a network
of congruent polygon perimeters:
hexagons and squares, or octagons?
When she had choked on her last breath
a comet lept out of her lips
into a shadow that opened
in the corner of the ceiling.
No one realized the morticians
would have to reverse into
the driveway. For moments, no one
noticed the hearse’s louspeaker
and its hymns for the whole neighborhood.
Creatures like us are not meant
to know the secrets of earth
and moon at twilight. Quiet!
and look: the shroud of fog
recedes from the looking-glass lake.
Pine and poplar stand
sentinel, more alert and steady
in their reflection than on their mossy
banks. They’re waiting for the moon
and her glance above the shoulder
of the forest. Higher still,
she regards herself one long
last time before her lonesome
overhead obligations commence.
If there were a picture of the soul
that appeared in dream,
it would be ike this:
A horizon of shadowy sky
and tarnished earth
A boy composed of clay
drawing a horse out
of the storming sky
The light moves slowly here
on muscle and bone
loyal to the direction
of where the world once was.
Two hands are too many
to hold the family trinkets.
I sometimes wear my father’s ring.
I say it is forgiveness,
I say it is for a man who didn’t drink,
who didn’t smash plates on walls;
I say it is for a father who was proud
of my music and proud of his touchdowns;
I say it is for a faithful man,
a man whose backhand never hurt.
No, it’s not for crying in the night,
not for striking door frames and headboards.
It’s always just a dream, those things never happened:
His ring is my wish-ring.
I’ve made myself an old body,
too heavy to stand on bitter bones
or get this fat off of my spine,
let go of hunger, addiction, spite.
My wish-ring wants me to go for a walk
before dark, wash the dishes, dust the house,
clean the carpets, wash the drapes, play nice,
get in charge of my spending, ride my bicycle more.
My wish-ring says I am not old enough for these poems,
you can’t even own those! They are like chickdees that spiral
and alight on a fence, noticing me noticing them.
You can’t even reach out – they’ll fly away!
A boy is trapped
in a patch of thorny bramble.
Downfield, the feeble pines
blaze and give away
their violet gases.
The father approaches with a step
like a war drum, wearing the devil’s disgust
underneath his eyes. The light
is evaporating above the trees.
In the woods, the animals wait for dark
by the stream.
With this poem,
I spit a tankard of anger
and another of greed,
hack the fizzing residues
from my ribs.
I take such faulty measures:
set a wood bead in each thumbprint and eye,
tally the dashes cut into tablet and wall:
These do not equal the sadness
my own judgment causes me.
Go out and measure the sea:
footfall upon dune,
borderline of reed and foam,
breakers, horizon.
Pour out the tidefuls
before the next moon.
My clever geographical me
needs to find the creek bed
where fallen branches and bramble flourish,
burrow into holes
forgotten by the trunks of washed away trees
fold my limbs under my body
and press the face of my forehead
into the suctioning clay.
My I needs to
discharge all this chatter underground
until membrane dissolves,
the creek floods into my tear ducts,
the I secreting the tincture of this telepathy
downriver leach it into lakes
that glint and warm by daylight and
surrender their surface to air and wind.
Until this I
chokes up the planet in continuous clouds
that rain and storm and fill all the listening mouths
with this parenthetical poetry.
The moon of the pure sky
casts a rigid shadow
on the crackling grass below,
the crooked limbs of oak
are winter bone.
Before we ever spoke,
my mother and I
were a universe
of electric song:
We dreamt the frequency
of tsunami and supernova,
the rumble of a distant star,
a steady, repeating, familiar howl,
continuing before the page
of white noise was printed.
She telephones at work, midday –
Her voiceprint emerges
amid sheets of static.
I do not understand
what she is saying;
I cannot make sense
of the sounds. We
keep the line open
for four minutes.
There is too much interference now.
I hear the conversations
of all the other sons with their mothers;
A double-note of music,
a siren, a newsflash,
a call from a well, from deep wood,
from the back of a van,
shattering glass on the bathroom floor.
Scientists recline
on the hoods of their cars
in the desert and listen
to the sky through headphones,
their heartbeats join
the din of the universe,
the songs they sang
with their mothers.
—Dictated by the children of the Giraffe Class, ages four and five
—Collected and edited by Hannah Dixon and me
You like to play with him and him. You’re my friend because you like to work in Construction with me. You’re good at watercolors. You work in Light and Shadow and you like to work at the Big Table. I’m glad that you’re in the Giraffe Class because you’re very nice to me.
*
You play with me at the light table. You’re nice to me. You’re nice to me and I help you. I let you look at the stuff I bring here from home. You’re my friend because we play together on the playground. I am glad that you’re in my class.
*
I like you because you play with me all the time. Every day you find me and just start playing. You’re really good at the monkey bars. You also really like swinging on the tire swing too. I couldn’t live if you weren’t born. You’re pretty silly like my grandpa.
*
I play jaguars with you a lot. You sit beside me. You’re a good friend to me because you’re very good to me and very nice to me too. You like to play in Construction and roll around in the meeting area. You’re good at football and like to talk to me a lot.
*
You love hearts. You’re really nice and you play with me a lot. You like the color red—and pink.
*
You’re good at running and you like to slide. You’re a good friend to me because you play with me and I like to play with you. You dance really funny. I’m glad you’re in the Giraffe Class because you sit beside me in Meeting Time. We like to build in Construction together.
*
You play with me at the light table and sort jewels. You work with me at the Big Table. You eat snack with me and you’re my friend. You work in Construction with me and have cool shoes. I’m glad you’re in my class because you’re nice.
*
You always make me laugh. When you got my building knocked over, we just fixed it. You always have snack with me. You always like to build in Construction. You always like to work at the Big Table too. I’m glad that you’re my friend in the Giraffe Class.
*
You’re good at the monkey bars. You’re my friend. You like sharing stuff. I like to play with you on the monkey bars, but I can’t now because I have a blister. You’re good at finding nature and you’re very nice. I love you because we shared birthday parties.
*
You’re good at the monkey bars, and you’re good at drawing. You’re my friend and you’re nice. I’m glad that you’re in the Giraffe Class. We work together.
*
You do such beautiful work, like, you draw it so pretty, like one time you made a big butterfly on a big piece of paper and you let me help. You always have a tray out because . . . I don’t really know why—maybe you just like making beautiful things for people.
Today I bought
a goldfish
to replace the one
we buried sweetly
last week
in a small wood
near the school.
He’s a big little fish,
though, about
twice the size
of the two survivors
in the tank. He could
eat them. He could
starve them.
He butted
and rammed
the walls
of the bag
as I set it afloat.
When I returned
to release him,
he dove right down
to a dip in the gravel
and stayed there
for minutes.
I pressed
my fingertip
to the glass
and he flew!
The old fish
noticed his cut
through the water,
they knew
his distress
and waited
for him to slow.
Tonight I know why Matisse hung those
black stars in the same sky with his pulsing sun:
Sometimes the mind travels faster than
the speed of light:
violet radiation of the pavement below,
neon wildflowers buzzing above,
a rank of fiery swiveling characters:
Outsiders dare not—
But Matisse cut out a tunnel,
a column of blue oxygen
receding toward the surface.
In this place the body collects
and multiplies the singular light overhead.
The waters had adjusted well
to their new geographical condition,
begun to accept their gathered-up-ness,
and settled in their surface-flat surface.
They flowed to the heavens, cooing Blue!
Blue! Blue!
But the day the mountain came,
a pillar of sulfur rose
from the base of his spine and filled
up the sky. The waters
lashed their white arms
against his violent breast.
The waters they sang a circle of
steam round the nose of the mountain.
While the earth held its breath,
The waters reached into the sky
crying out Rain! Rain!
Rain!
We see the tree company trucks frequently these days
in our leafy suburban neighborhood.
it seems they’re doing everything they can
to keep our frontlines intact,
buzzing up and down our little avenues braking
suddenly, hopping out,
and giving first aid like medics on a battlefield.
Here, from my accommodating deck chair, I
see how the neighbor’s red oak is holding out.
It still towers above our perky little roofs
but bears garlands of scars along its surviving limbs.
The stumps along the trunk and remaining limbs
are hardening. These injuries are confusing;
they didn’t come from objects hurled by man or machine
from behind enemy lines. The injuries
came from inside our own lines, from our own medics,
from our own fight against inevitability,
our own disobedience to
the tree’s own natural death.
This morning, two male cardinals
squabble and wrestle in a gap of holly.
I have no idea about the content
of their conflict, but my, it’s early.
They finish and are away
as swiftly as they appeared.
Later, her orange beak appears,
then, the grey, quivering body,
tucked in an adjacent alcove.
She’s been studying me for minutes,
if not for the whole time.
Sorry, but today I couldn’t write a poem
because today I had to do the life,
do the clock and do the clothes,
the drive, the work,
the stairs, the rooms,
do the food, do the phone.
Today I couldn’t write my poem
because I had to get out back
and throw a stick for my lab once,
twice, three-hundred and fifty times,
I had to throw that slobbery branch
until it disintegrated into a scatter of mulch.
And today I couldn’t write that poem
because of my conference with a bunch
of unexpected sunshine,
because I sat on that top step, on mute,
not getting into words
what a glorious show that star was giving.
Today I couldn’t write any poem
because I lingered too long
on the deck of a glass bridge
trying to discern what plaintive tune
the wind was humming below my feet.
Sorry, again – today I couldn’t write this poem
because last night I sat up late reading
that in order to write a poem
you have to make sure to show up
to appointments with your own psyche.
I haven’t kept any unnecessary appointments
with myself for quite some time now.
On high ground
the children manage to tip their boat
unsure what to do about the pool
of rainwater that spills –
But one: he says
Get a stick and draw the way
you want the river to go.
The woman naked behind the garden fence
tugging and wrapping a withering vine from dry mud
Elbows, knees, tongue clicking –
Here you take it, it’s all I have left
Wet inside the girl’s hands is new life –
Let’s you and me forget the things you are about to remember
