Way out there
the gulf stream-river
steams
dreams, flows over
the great tilt
past smaller countries
within reach
warmed, green
quiet wading great fields
of ocean
of cloud, to african
beaches
or up through
celtic seas to poles
too big for
eyes.
The woods chatter like a million skulls
cicada-full, louder than I’ve
heard
a drove, a teeming gone at sundown
replaced by aurora-silk
flags
waves, movies on hazy sheets spread
east to west,
dark
in the greening piedmont, the slope
a tilt, wide—and groaning for
fall-lines,
O the watershed, the characters living here
among and above, around these holy open
fields
alternate their sleep and wakings
then post it all to the
sky.
At the end of it
my mother grew light.
Seemed hollow the way
bird bones are hollow.
Mom could sit forever
at the breakfast table to finger
her silver rosary strung with blue
glass beads that had small pocks
As some flower seeds are almost
perfect spheres but fall short
have pocks, flaws. Mom said
her quiet Hail Mary’s decade after decade
Until she’d finally doze off somewhere between
“The fruit of thy womb” and “the hour of our death.”
The ground is our enduring hope. First came
months of a relentless scorching that lasted
beyond any reckoning we have ever known.
The earth grew angry, strangled many things.
Then came a time when geese arrived back
in our skies and on the shyly lapping
shores of our lakes. In black night geese’s blasts
shake stars. Between those two times, earth’s orbit
Tilted us away from the sun. The fibers of satsuma
spiders in vibrating webs, dew as it drenches fields
even sheets of paper on desks feel this
the removal of sun’s intensity. Feel
That decrease lift in every cell. Such loss is gain
Held in quiet and in speech upon our tongues.
Inside a single diamond of rain
heaven might rest.
You can be doing anything
sliding towels into a cabinet
Turning the page on
an afternoon nap
and tell in your bones
the exact second
When rain, any rain
starts, when it stops.
Aren’t deer, raccoons
and trees like that also.
Absolutely
Married to air.
Boxes teeter on edges,
crammed full of younger selves,
formative but now unrecognisable,
faces in thickened mist.
Dancing shoes are packed:
laying head to toe,
mimicking children
in large Victorian families,
nestled for warmth in bed,
coping with lack of space.
As I tape and label boxes,
I wonder which will stay closed,
concealing its underbelly forever,
refusing to give up its wares
for prouder, newer houses.
Sometimes, I wish to crawl in,
tape myself up
with kitchen crockery,
burrowing to forgetfulness,
finding a singular space
where moving does not exist:
viewings, listings, sale boards, asking prices
are ghostly figments,
glittering to coal dust
in darkened cardboard corners.
But then I see her,
eyes dilating with what can be:
more space, wraparound gardens,
kitchen islands to dance around.
Quite suddenly,
cardboard cities
are no longer a place of refuge.
My thoughts climb back out,
placing my imagination
upon taller, wiser trees,
where it can see sunlit bands
of new possibilities.
We regroup, join forces,
as we search for new homes,
eager, now readied,
on the move.