In Advance of April’s Full Moon
The universe is expansive, infantile,
and unforgiving in its disregard
for human desire,
but not in its need to be looked
after or cared for.
Leaves from last fall persist through the rain—
a cloud arrives
under the cover of other clouds.
Inscribing memories into the book
of your mind does not mean
they will develop slowly through dark
before being brought up to the light.
It’s time to take solace
in the temporality of the body—
the lament pales alongside the ode
or the ode alongside the lament pales
with time.
If I repeat a statement endlessly,
it will become more buoyant.
If you manage to get expelled from the next life
without me, then wait
for me in the new world—trust I’m
looking for a way,
imagining what could have dawned above the sun
before the sun was all I knew.
11 Remixes of a Summer Day
1.
A patch of leaves furrows
the treetop
from ethereal to solid
while its base hollows in the sun.
2.
What alphabet
these grounded twigs
will arrive at
depends on the wind
and what its billowing
urges to be said.
Say patient for impatiens,
say willow for oak,
say observation
is the kindest of all actions.
3.
I don’t know which air feels more buoyant,
that which gathers along the crest of the hill
or the air finding its way through
the beak of the Blue-winged Warbler.
4.
On first thought the inside of the trees
seem like understories to their leaves.
Dependence frames most equations.
No need for the honesty of the ax
to know what you already should say.
5.
A branch does not require Herculean greatness,
but the tree does it anyway.
Somewhere ants parachute, aloft
with their own weightlessness. Where they land,
the narrative need not notice.
6.
The crow mocks the ant’s short life from afar.
Its brief movement creates a demented Z,
suggesting a purposed indifference.
Meanwhile the river meanders downhill
to a creek and a river again.
Its movement moves away from metaphor.
7.
From one side the tree-seed shell mirrors a split cranium.
From the other, a hedgehog crouching roadside ready.
8.
In formation, the birds walk in circles that make only sense to them,
their wings tucked like a knuckle hinge.
9.
Beyond the point of human reflection,
the mind turns to creosote before it turns to fragments.
10.
The arborist has submitted her
official resignation
to the gods of air and weightlessness.
They open another bottle of wine, drop
the cork into the darkest part of the sea.
11.
Say anything is rife with gravity—
the planet skitters over its own cracked beauty.
