never go I am terrified he is ill is dying he jokes
about mortality every time we speak and the Venice
that dreams watery cool and pastel inside my head
sinks each time a little further into the flooding chambers
of that carefully constructed organ the dumb pump
that sends both of us out on our separate trajectories
separate for so long now the pump I blame for all the ways
it will has and did fail behind my own mortal breasts
I feel the water the river the world taking greedy and rising
and if born to drown what could this small lump matter
what could his skittering away from futures just as I as a child
couldn’t bear to see the shining things on offer for others
who could pay matter and now when I would pay
almost any price now here this moment everything comes
back to the pump in waves in which both of us and Venice
will have fallen but please God not yet below the surface
another ruined thing necessary and more beautiful
[The horses]
I wanted to ask how do I do this how do I keep doing this
how do I stop I once required the moon no once your voice
moved the moon for hours across the skylight and the stove
burned itself out and the stars followed suit eight hours passed
and the moon passed the glass filled instead with clouded day
and both of us so tired still not saying goodbye and my ear
days later still red and tender the hot phone I held going down
again into the cooling house the house the baby squirrels came
all that spring into for warmth caught and taken in a box kept
for nothing but that to the barn and set down in the hay
and fallen feed the horses retired to other homes the barn
where tack hung in the shapes of backs necks mouths and brows
as though the horses had not gone but become instead invisible
I had never been happier disliked the intervals of silence and sun
I no longer own a barn a skylight full of the moon a house
that squirrels seek out we both still own the means but
what keeps happening is the moon the day and the moon again
and it wasn’t the horses turning into ghosts it wasn’t
[Touch me now]
One day I wake
I walk forward carrying
a narrative carrying an end
a hole ten years deep
and sleep has made for it a lid
fragile thin plastic wrap a skin graft a patch
inside
the hole is dark and full of stars
is dark and full
of scars this body
grows a garden of badly barely healed
feelings
I mean skin I mean
go ahead touch me now
for I am wild
[Was it ice]
The season settles in strips the trees of leaves the heart
of the matter is weather I have been wind sheared storm
wracked thrown off course and down I have been all
river no shore what drowns you is not the water but
the ice this strict difficult surface refusing to let you go
let you grow replacement parts for what’s been cut away
glaciers planted boulders huge stones that bubble up
from the soil I mean the soul from which you make
the walls high and thick from which you fill the holes
till the soil for some semblance of hope your role
in all of this is dimly understood the ways that safety
arises or has passed you by you are neither glacier
nor ground nor harbor breakwater shelter siren
or cave is it comfort or touch that you crave
was it ice that held you down or was it love
[Once]
Once I caught fireflies in a summer meadow thunderheads building
the night harrowing the sky once in a different night I played at hiding
was sought by the wrong boy once summer’s thin fabric and hands
taught me loathing of my own flesh once I was caught and bound
by a stranger once I bound myself to a man I only thought I loved
in the haze and fog of insects and dying stars once all my choices
were proven wrong in the crinkling grass in the shining moss
up high once a mountain taught me my bones and breath
taught me to breathe once I learned from a mountain how to leave
[Parable]
Sometimes when I wake crawl from the beloved dark everyone else
has gone out as if winter were never danger as if ice were of no
consequence everyone has gone out as in candle as in light fire
door as if in need of more contact with the ground everyone has
knelt frozen in the snow just so many statues vivid in treeshadow
each body vacant each body a cold patience and what happens next
is that I too go out among them I count each one where they kneel
I walk forbidden somehow to touch shoulder touch cheek wipe snow
from where it drifts against open eyes I count by outlining shadows
trace each thin penumbra into the snow move on to the next move on
late into grayblue dusk as the cold gathers as the wind moves in
as overhead these old desert leaves rattle where they cling mutter
this bitter rosary of life before it came down to just this useless
holding on when the moon comes when the moon brightens but
does not warm I stop to rest I stop to sleep I curl sheltered from
the wind on this the quiet side of one stranger or another
[Epiphany]
This day night
this place
is a world
of still air
of smoke like ghosts
gathered
over houses
a place in which you
are like the smoke
which is to say
mostly gone
which is to say the bitter end
of a terrible fire
call
for wind pray for it
lay me down
right here
in the holy night under
those clear old skies
lay me down
in the town square let
the smoke
grow thin as an old pall
pall as in cover
over chalice or coffin
pall meaning
wear out wear thin as smoke
as smoke caught
in the risen
in this finally risen in this the wind
Center Panel
[Actias luna]
Dear god dear ghost dear ghostgod and dearly departed
dear mother and dear water you own each other now
tangled in blue molecular hollows in the always arriving
rain we own your porches your wornwood docks all those
swaybacked summer places dear god you are not were not
the water not coming always toward us in blood and tide
in particles and waves dear god you should know
I’m no one’s shore no one’s ocean dear darkness dear forest
dear pale flutter dear light-impaled luna dear all the secret
ways of wood and water dear fire and dear myriad scars
dear god this is not faith this is a moth born silent born
without mouth this is a soul in painful molt to winged hungry
and dying in the dark this is a single green angel lost in chemic
quest in the narrow June night this is the white bright cross
stained with a thousand tiny lives tiny deaths this is the li
ght
we mistake for light this is the might as well be dead beloved
dear god dear thief you stole them both dear god dear wrecker
no matter what you think what you might have thought
this is not a love letter
[Parable]
I wake and once again the trees have come the trees
have once again grown through me a tiny forest tiny
tangled copse come to populate all the windswept
all the empty spaces dendritic roots curl around cells
as if around stones and the furling tender leaves
with their hungry wait for light and now the trees
fill with birds whose wings I feel as faint capillary
flutter whose songs rustle in the blood autumn now
and the leaves loosen begin their fall the tiny spiders
move in set about their careful work stitching leaves
back to branches mending the quilted sky the geese
travel over and in the woods the mist descends
everything is indistinct all bleached and pale the mist
tastes in the muscles in the throat like a chill when
the mist dissipates it takes everything with it branches
leaves spiders their sticky useless sutures even the trees
are gone the spaces full of snow and now the snow too
is gone the spaces are meadows again are empty again
and now this is who this is what this is all I am
[Over]
When he’s done with them the angels shred in the wind the angels die
like rifles crack sharp and hard metal brittle in bitter cold the angels
die on the wheel the cross the rack when it’s over his cold puppets
hang in their mute strings their snarled their tattered wings their teeth
gnaw briefly at the gate they wail and beg but nothing comes back
the angels learn then how to pray the angels learn why prayer requires
flesh blood and bone requires bone cut out carved and offered up
pray they say pray as if you meant it as if the bone each prayer
is etched upon were not your own but the arm shin or rib of some
sad and lovely child some fragile perfect being go ahead they say
call the baby in from the abbey walk the colt in from his life between
the meadow and the sky walk him away from the places he believes
he is both safe and at home hide the blade behind your crumbling
your serpent spine and pray pray as if his faith his love his grace
his reckless racing life depends upon it and know that it does and
that it does not matter
[This I know]
That the horses that somehow
fear begets grace is born
is even now running
*
that the dead
that there is nothing left
that the dead tether only each other
anchor only oceans only stones
*
that even beloved that beloved
lasts lasts as long as
not very
*
that you choose to go on
or do not
*
that the blade can cut but
the blade
severs nothing that scars
are reins roads are maps
*
that scar is halter scar is tether is weathered weal
white rope that scar
is never really going to heal
[What I mean]
You must understand when I say heart say broken say
angel god when I say love and say death those huge
small words you should distrust something language
me the ravine vast gap between what flickers in the mind
and what stumbles into language stumbles the way
I stumble into the woods walk lost walk directionless
walk allowed each day only to listen and come later
aching crazed and at peace to some edge some river
of water dirt or rarely pavement and nobody asks and
still what tolls through the night is what did you do today
and you remake your day into story into language I walked
I say I sent the blood to punish the heart that fine red engine
I sent the body against again the world that huge construct
one fraction of which is all I will ever travel I sent the body
so I could feel it there in the forest thickets glades and rivers
feel the heat the heart’s whole house shaken whole house
shuddering I say god say angel though they may not exist
as such though nothing is speaking to speaking for or
through me so what name should I make for what got caught
in this bleak this grief if not heart which is whole which is never
yet broken never even empty listen dear when I say heart
what I mean is maybe boat that thin-sailed machine tumbled
in a storm’s grinding path when I say broken what I mean
is small craft warning is storm beyond any storm this body
can make or endure what I mean is too far from shore is maybe
no shore no ocean is sounding again those old familiar depths
and when I say depth what I mean is fathom meaning a measure
of how far down to dig a grave meaning the span of a man’s arms
[Because in all your life you’ve lived]
Because in all your life you’ve lived always the same twelve hours
though you remember them otherwise the years with their numbers
the months the anonymous weeks because you don’t understand how
so many differences accrete in the sameness of days because the barn
is again empty the meadow strewn with both sweet and rue because
the horses acquiesce daily to those thin fences because holy means
wholly most surely alone because you believe the horses to be small
gods and because the gods this morning have rolled in mud and have
thundered but again did not jump because when you speak of the horses
the angels bare and gnash their sharpened teeth because the dark belongs
only to itself but the stars don’t mind if you call them your own because
you are the water living between the ice and so many stony places
because you too are all tide and fence all rise and rail because we assemble
the world with imperfect senses because therefore we can never fully
understand because there is a fence between one moment and the next
and this is the fence we acquiesce to and we name that fence time the way
we say event horizon for all that which cannot escape because the horses
did once escape and swam from the sea in storm and wreck and because
they never again left but once oh once were never had never been here
[Snowfields]
And I wonder sprawled on the curved recurved back
of the hill the towers of clouded sky crushing the horizon
flat I want to know how to strip the griefstorm from the flesh
flense the spirit scrape it down to the clean bone unbreaking
make it take in stride another raw dawn these days of snow
on cold on frozen take in stride this place of glass and ice
this place knit stitched pierced by the shadows of all those
departed birds begin again to assemble linens pillows
blankets scarves the small soft comforts cushions cradles
learn how to lay me down in something other than danger
other than fury ice and risk learn to stop dropping this body
into snowfields making these empty shapes learn to stop
waiting for them to be filled
[Let the blue earth spin]
The heart beats its thin fists
against the bones the rails
the heart the heart rails against this
silence this absence I count
every imaginable
thing
stars scars streetlights the endless succession
of nights the heart we say
the heart for what
gets chipped by the facts of the
matter
you let the blue earth spin you let time zone you
let this clotted afternoon
unspool
because what if the soul’s deciduous
what if antlers leaves and teeth
what if something
decorates that way breathes through this
what if this is the way you fall what if
he lives on what if they all do what if
this incantation of starlings
decanted
into an abiding sky
[Things the realtor will not tell the new owner]
When she left she left so many ghosts the whole place is
poisoned with them their stray sadnesses untraceable scents
those cold holes in the very air so when you wake your throat
choked with tears having dreamt some strange some other
beloved you never knew and know is gone and this morning
desperately miss don’t panic please please rise instead into
the groundmist walk out among her patient anchored trees
her ghostbear is there but will offer no harm will pace hungry
wary and finally away there too the ghost coyotes who filled
her nights with difficult with strange music you’ll hear her
ghostbirds the hawk as a tiny falling wind the owls of winter
dying like prayers the morning flight of songbirds who carve
her shape into the yard with their swerving whose young
are born into the feel and smell of her hair rise and walk
through all of it to the lake next door you’ll find her spot
on shore you’ll let those borrowed those inherited tears
join hers the ones she shed so long ago you’ll let small fish
rise to the drops salted and falling it will all feel familiar