Gradient
A storm petrel flutters
over choppy water, flicking
drops into the sky
that touch the waves
any number of places
invisible in this wind.
All fear and softness,
the bird’s body gives
muscle a rest, expanding,
bracing its hollow bones
against the moving air
hoping, if birds hope,
land of any type
makes its way through
the shifting horizon, arriving
sooner than tomorrow’s dark.
I want to yell
into the coastal fog,
tell the storm petrel
it is not much
better here on shore:
turn back, the mindless
mist remains in spite
of all our striving.
But the wind sweeps
all my warnings out
to sea, performs again
the ritual ripping away
it knows so well.
Almost extinct, the bird
feels things inside it
tilt now, almost tumbling
out of their places.
This is the moment
I start walking again
farther into something not
water and not rock.
The storm petrel cries
or sings a note.
It punctures, hovers, fails.Poem 17
Density
It
is not the opening of eyes but the opening of blinds
to
snow that starts this day. I roll over, quietly naming
things
not in this room: carpet, food, a body’s rearranging
of
sheets in a different direction than that I rolled.
Heat
is held back by the door, an inch of cold hovering
inside
the threshold. I reach for the handle, the only exit
emptying
into another inside. It turns the same way
as
always, it barely fits the curve of my hand, quietly
holding
in or holding out, I do not know which.
Twist
and pull—the balancing begins: one air curdling
into
another, wood floor catching light in new angles,
something
quietly moving that is not me. Not even close.___________________________________________
Poem 18
Make it Sunday
I need not describe it
in terms of loneliness. It is a
depth,
approximate at best, a center
housed in a body defined
in relation to foreign things.Poem 19
Paraselene
A
slope rises to the horizon, only a few inches from my face
if
this were a painting. I would say that the snow glitters
but
snow only covers, and it’s a flimsy dusting at that.
I
want to name the snow, to call it you because it is
cold—it
is a cliché falling from the sky, barely
less
obvious than the moon, which has itself
changed
shapes since last night. On the road
I
can see the aftermath of wind silhouetted
against
the asphalt: the shadows of things
more
substantial than they themselves.
Out
there almost no headway awaits.
Test
your weight. The surface holds
a
moment, then splits: a tilted body
sinks,
stops, steps again knowing
each
future footfall sinks anew.
I
could turn back to see all
the
hollow proofs of flight,
but
all the sunken scars
I
leave this landscape
point
up the slope
to
me, a traveler
who
feels, but
does
not hear
the
quiet
filling.Poem 20
Utterance
—For
Maggie
May
the wall crack
your
back. May retreat
find
you screaming
without
artifice,
without
guile.
This
is the art of sacrifice:
not
a hole—a shift
in
the heart, a pulling
toward
something
outside
the
body, an animal weight
jamming
the chest, breath
the
only struggle. That other
blood-filled
body
pulses
just like yours.
May
you be the foreign object
splintered
into wood.
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