Series: Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2011

The box you sent came in the mail today,
the three jam jars intact— I did not know
the local orchards now have kumquat, enough
to turn into a thriving industry. We love
the bagful of pastillas, each bite just
as we remember, toasted milk-sweet in fluted
pastry shells, each wrapped in colored
cellophane. I didn’t recognize the vendors’
tags on any of the shirts, but the girls
think they are cute, especially embellished
with rhinestones. I smelled a whiff of travel
as I undid the plastic and lifted wads of
crumpled newsprint, padding, from inside: just
for a moment, that other place and its crowded
streets, old houses leaning at the curb or
limned with tungsten light— mingled scents
of tobacco, wilted greens, old linen somehow
sharper and more crisp, because of evanescence.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dear heart, before the sun can overthrow all the sturm und drang caused by restlessness in the sheets, too much caffeine, and that over-decorated danseuse named guilt waltzing in your ballrooms especially when nights are longer, look close at the beds in the garden— There are tiny spires beneath summer’s leftover foliage, cities of frost spangled with brittle diadems. Look at the miniature hanging bridges on the outskirts, the lined streets leading to the plaza devoid of movement. Spires, casements shut: who’s sleeping there? who’ll ring the bells in the bell-tower? In a few hours, it’ll be warm enough to melt them all: not even a sigh left behind. Meanwhile, in the Cinema Paradiso that plays all the time in my head, the music in the opening scene is always indistinguishable from the breeze that parts the curtains, draws the eye in toward the complicated interiors. There’s the linen cloth, the table where lemons lie on a ceramic plate. Maybe I’m making parts of this up. Maybe the plate is tin, or maybe it’s a bowl. But there is no mistaking the wistful light that brushes them, so that even in black and white or sepia, a spray of citrus, a stroke of rosemary, perforates the air.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

(“The word is constructed from Greek, petra, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.”)

Let me know if that much-touted prospect of the future
is coming in the shape of a funnel cloud, or if it will be

the whiff of something sour despite the absence of wind—
There’s only the barest motion in the air, and today’s

forecast of rain, gone before mid-afternoon. Indoors,
I’m screwing replacement filters in these plug-in room

fresheners: oils of cinnamon and burnt clove, balsam
spruce. The outlets are low: a small billow of scent

curls around our ankles. A trace of it stays at
my wrists until I wash it off. Remind me again

what you whispered in my ear some time ago. Whoever
writes the history of rain will have to remember

how molecules loosen and bind, how heat creates that
chemical smell: imprint of limbs upon linen,

slight rearrangement and catch in the breath.
Dust and earth seared by lightning.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
(Let justice be done though the heavens fall.)

The bodies are no longer there. They’ve dug them up
and carried them off, exhumed from shallow graves.

They’ve laid them out and counted, set torsos and limbs
aright, sewed shut the seams. The sea cannot be their grave.

Who made the pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge?
They gored and slit the very air. Oh most depraved.

Not even the womb was sacred. Not kin, not friend, not
bystander. Not hair, not skin struck by gun barrel or stave.

What are they worth, who are no longer here? Warped leaves
in the canopy condemn the unresolved: they won’t forgive.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

This year, such burdens as we haven’t
seen before; such rain that fell to saturate
the earth— but underground, the sound
of currents clamoring to rise, be heard.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Where waves roll onto the beach, sand the color of sable— that wet
surface on which fleeting messages are written: a kind of paper.

Restaurant napkins, gas station receipts, the merest strip of found
Chinese fortune cookie fortune: I’ve scribbled on these instead of paper.

In a calligraphy book, the character for poetry combines the ideographs
for “mind” and “dancing”. Tiny birds leave prints on the shore: their paper.

Old newspapers, bits of grass, leaves and petals, bark:
sieved through a screen frame, they find new lives as paper.

Sun not yet high, but frost melts quickly. Grass glistens. The world is full
of screens. But I prefer a window full of steam on which to draw— like paper.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Reading a poem by Di Piero, …the best
of love is enthusiasm’s/ intense abandon,
a voice/ in song that preys on no one/ and is
unconscious of its joy, I have to stop and think
hard to remember: when was the last time I
felt such rust-colored joy, ruddy as the copper-
clad teakettle brought quick to the boil,
singing its head off atop the stove?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.