Series: Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2012

All night, he said, I’d thrashed and snarled
thick bits of indecipherable language through
clenched teeth; and even after he’d shifted
my unconscious, evidently dreaming body
into another position, whatever its source
would start me up again— In the morning,
limbs aching as if from deep muscle strain,
I tell him I’m still trying to remember,
reluctant to name the same old ghosts
that have come here again to haunt me—
First, the boy my mother hired from down
the street to cut the grass and scrub
the floors, and how he slit gladiolus stems
and yellow snapdragon throats in the garden
from boredom, before turning to me to say
he’d show me how to play doctor; then,
not long after, the uncle whose unexpected
fingers broke into my afternoon naps—
How could you remember something like this,
they said to me years later, implying lies,
invention, refusing to believe a three-
year-old could come to such swift understanding
of how something could untether from the body
suspended within a bathroom’s cold white tile,
climb up the wire dangling the lone light bulb,
out the window, past the twisting trees
to where the thin, high notes of some
small bird beat through the air—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

in leaves, it’s time to clap two
pieces of wood together.

Keep an eye on the fire, raising both
hands over your head; turn one knee out
while resting the sole of the foot

on the inside of the calf. Imagine
what it takes to stay breathing like that,
how to store up heat for a whole season.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Within the labyrinth,
the grain of wood
runs counter to
the energy of
the sun;
so I work
to dream the voice
of water unspooling
its sacred thread,
leaping toward a door
open in a distant world.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

My father, we did not know then it would be the last day of your life. But you struggled into your slippers and your bathrobe the warm, dusky-gold of corn; and you came and stood in the doorway, holding on to the wooden frame for ballast. How long did you stand there, more wispy than a plume of smoke, simply gazing over the rest of us huddled on two beds? We’d pushed them together, exhausted from going days without sleep through the aftershocks that rocked the city. The upright piano had moved to the far end of the living room. The china cabinet sounded crystal chimes as if from afar, but nearer than the drone of rescue helicopters fracturing the dark. No one dared to light candles for fear of setting the house on fire. No one dared to unfasten their shoes. I’ve written this over and over, composing and revising, revising and composing, trying to return to that elusive fold of time, those last few hours before your body stiffened and your eyes turned silver-grey, the color of a clear but frozen lake. Even as nurses tried to revive you where you lay on a pallet in the hospital wing, your spirit had started its journey. Out of that valley it rose, rising above earthquake ruins, rising higher than the limestone rocks; rising, still, as seasons changed and pools of sleeping fish warmed back to life.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

That moment before dark: deep blue, etched
lines in city brick; a rain-filled plastic tub
alive with circling wings, then still—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What wakes you
is the pain beneath
the shoulder blades,
where filmy wings
might have begun—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Breath,
branch,
tree,

wrought
metal
filigree—

frost
that glints
in points

throughout
the yard:
electric

fence,
theory of
expectancy—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The years teach much that the days never know—
You know, the parts that live beyond the margins,
beyond what sage or bearded philosopher could know—
Theory is when you think you know the sound of shoes
on the grass; praxis is the knife-edged blade made known
to unsuspecting flesh. At noon the sun is overhead,
a yellow crayon smudge you know lies somewhere behind
thick tarp of cloud. You know its whereabouts the way
your heart lists toward all it may have ever known
of ardent love or quiet kindness: not one particular
thing, or one blazing example you once knew from long
ago. Not that it makes a difference: the heart’s its most
inscrutable mystery. Joyless, it knows to yearn for joy;
in fullness, knows to sense the turning of the wheel.

* ~ Emerson

In response to small stone (185) and Morning Porch.

where a woman in a long skirt and a thin gauze panuelo poses against a plaster column

where two sisters gracefully incline their heads in opposite directions though the white soldier has his arms around their waists

where a narrow outrigger floats down a river not yet choked with plastic bottles and filth

where groups of women walk down a mountain trail balancing baskets of produce on their dark heads

where the mountains circle their strong dark arms with ink and scars

where these arms that pound the grain could also lift the sky

where a man is holding a scrap of paper he has picked up from a table, and try as I might,
I cannot decipher the message that might have been written there

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.