38 - Going Lightly

Do you remember that famous Christian book about cults?
On the cover spun rainbow waters in a down-drain spiral —

America the melting pot, or, an oil slick was in our sink but it’s going away!

What were we doing on the rim of it?

What was I doing, learning how subtle variations in the gradient out

from pure light all end in the same darkest gone-away?

We were prodigies of collapsing space

forgetting pipes to waterways covering two-thirds

of a planet made just for men, who don’t swim far.

We were forging the ways our bodies go as minds move —

that is, self-limiting, or, why I can’t now unfold all

the crushed wax-paper skies above regions I belatedly see.

The weight of our bones in the world is decided early.

And even as I’ve strained to widen my eyes

for the dim of unholy wilderness I know

the being-in-it feeling is no known quantity of light.

Others muscle in pressing-going through the friction-real;

I stay thin air, where solid things vanish.

31 - So Insulting, So Enlightened

One year, my sister and I

subjected Christmas mythology

to empirical testing.

“Sign here,” scrawled on

cardstock, “if you, Greenie

the Wonder Dog, who we love

so so much, are truly real.”

Then a hand-dotted line,

the length of a linchpin.

Folded over, addressed,

blessed with a gold star sticker,

scotch-taped to the pebbly wall

above the obligatory cookies.

We’d play the powers that be like

cheap psychics fed false

leads on how to flatter us best.

Come morning, bypassing presents

we opened the card to find

our stepfather’s scrawl

dyslexically confirming

the existence of a recently

invented flying dog.

We frowned a little at the gifts,

realizing they had been sacrificed

to the idols of magical thinking.

We both got just what we wanted.

30 - Passer Aux

God fell the morning we kids found

a baby starling on the lawn.

Stepping close cat-softly

our gasping pupils gulped

the light off thick grass

swelled with verdant juice,

arrogant to outdo the absurdity

of a bird in the dirt. Everything

was strange. I pictured

his feet black roots, feathers

shoots and fronds of night

and scattered white seeds

for planting flight in Earth.

But silent, hurt, and sunk in

adolescent bloat his downy

starscape a wilt of absent heaven,

stolen on the descent.

Order: passeriforme, passeri

same as those penny-sparrows who

never fall without the Father.

We tucked the little aeronaut

into a shoebox bed and blanket,

cradled as the car flew to

wherever white-gloved

ministers could right this

blot on invincible birdhood.

We couldn’t stay to see

if he would fly again, though

they all smiled nicely

in that lying way.

Who is responsible for flight?

Where does it go when birds die?

De passer à travers ma vie,

passer aux oubliettes,

mes passereaux infinie.

8 - If I Can Make It Here...

Here on the Atlantic coast, lip of the deep cup drunk in migrant faith,
I am on the cusp of seeing Truth:
        The postulant’s scopic skyline embossed upon the blue,
        like layered shadows cast by fresh eyes’ bright dream of it,
        city-solid, life-alight,
        but the ocean bedevils unsteady heels.
I feel the border’s weight from this changing place,
and follow history’s dark reverse, away.

Against the concrete inner curve of dock the water
beats a muddy waste:
        chopped froth upon the rough wall.
        Up rise brown peaks, and peaks
        of damp remains, debris, expelling
        the hushed filth of waves.
The Hudson paints its image on the city’s porous coast,
delivering banished revenants, drowned ghosts.

7 - Pine and Porcelain

Remember my satisfaction

in knick-knack shelving: pine

riddled with phloem, xylem lines

cheerily cohering in supportive

chorus that yes,

finespun gewgaws shall be upheld in this place!

Yes!

(Lacking power,

I had twisted screws through drywall

to sturdy the board by all

the torque my own right shoulder had.

As if this deed would compensate for

fragility elsewhere.)

The artifacts were inane.

A matte black Bastet cat with

inexact gold embellishments,

bought for twelve dollars out of the

import store cat pack,

and also hollow;

a white plate, glazed

to seal in a fingerpaint print

of a child’s pawlike foot;

two identical porcelain dolls

from a forgetful giver,

both named after me.

They all stood in a vague line

saying nothing decisive.

The dust now crowds

around the absence of their bases,

chalk lines,

anxious tracings of a murder scene.

Well, they were cheap.

Convincing, I professed my loyalty to the pine—

a venerable tree, bent to an unfit purpose—

But oh, did my skin prickle with

a sympathy for that porcelain.

4 - Prayer for Stagnant Waters

See, a shred of police caution tape
yellow trampled and tucked
into a pine chip bed:
the quiet of crimes.
This place,
dappled with wrung lemon rinds
bottle mouths kissing through
topskin of pond green, bobbing
mallards
the madness of swans,
it swallows the dreams of wakers
forgetting iniquitous night.
At this humid shrine of the languid
I pray for my salvation:
Send my soul with the Gerridae skaters
cross the membrane of tenebrous deep.