Series: Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

You want to know how many hours remain
on the fringed lilac faces of these clocks—

Oh take heart, unstrap your sandals, walk by
the shore, leaving the animal that’s lowered

its head to nuzzle wet sculpted sand. And then
come back to lay beneath the windowsill—

You’ll hear the honeybee still sharpening
its rhetoric, the far-off notes made

by bodies nested in burr and fiddlehead fern.
The latch of the gate falls close at evening’s

approach. Its brassy little sound bursts
like a small blue blossom puncturing the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The flower dangles by its stem; the stair-
case peels its progress, plank by plank,

diminishing into that well of light
we call a landing: what shore suspends

midway between the gradual earth,
the gradual sky? Night turns to day,

and day to night, reversing strip that
lightens at the edges. Lovers meet

and then soon part: whispers in the hedge,
while in the air, haloed and beaten,

disc that floats like labor’s emblem, its
coat-of-arms. Burnished and driven, I lip

the rain that poems the smallest flame,
that dangles the flower from its stem.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dark silhouettes of pine, valleys fanned out
as open-sided buses crest the ridge at dawn.

Frost-trails of breath lingering on the coldest
morning of the month so far. Tin shanties hold

their chilled sides close along the hills.
In one, a naked lightbulb: its tungsten

yellow glow above a kitchen sink,
where a grandmother is heating coffee

and putting the eggs in it to boil.
You glimpse her in the window as the bus

rolls by— lit end of her cigar
poised in her mouth, eyes scanning

the day for what warmth it will bring.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

And here’s the rain again, my love: silvering
the mouths of gargoyles perched at the edge of the roof—

Such watery abundance pouring down, and no other recourse
but sieve and sieve it through. Who could stay aloof

through such constant battering? See how the rushing crowds
clutch their collars close, looking for the nearest roof

under which to shelter. Eventually it lightens; the curtains
shimmer a reprieve. A waterdrop slides down your cheek.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Kung mayroon mang santo, patron,
o diyosa ng bawa’t kalbaryo,

ng lupa: kapirasong guhit ng buwan,
kay layong anino ng haplos.

* * *

Prayer

What saints, patrons
and goddesses might there be for each calvary?

O watch over
us who merely live on the cheek

of this earth: that sliver-stroke of moon,
its distant illusion of a caress.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Meadow Vole, Field Mouse, or Meadow Mouse (Microtus pennsylvanicus)

“…he led them up the mountain’s brow,
And shews them all the shining fields below.
They wind the hill, and thro’ the blissful meadows go.”
— Virgil, Aeneid (6.641)[16]

Dear meadow vole disappearing into the woods
in the jaws of a cat who holds her head high
and does not slink, perhaps it is unwarranted

to think of assigning you the role of gladiator
borne away in death, departing through fronds
of grass toward Elysium. But couldn’t I

imagine you an unwilling foot soldier conscripted
daily into war? Casualty fallen anew to the enemy
(as always, as in tragedy, classically mismatched:

bigger, meaner, more cosmically predatory than you),
yes it’s merely nature, neutral as red fox or mink
or short-eared owls that hunt above tufted nest or

burrow. In winter, for short-lived sustenance,
you find, hidden under snow, green parts of plants.
Our lives: mere wingspan of months in the wild;

easy sport, soft, twitching target for the gods.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

When I turn on the radio I hear
the story of a dead NASA satellite
about as large as a schoolbus,

which is right this minute falling
to earth and poised to burn in re-entry,
scattering a rain of hefty debris

some time in the next few days.
Where exactly on the six inhabited
continents it will land is anybody’s

guess: though all the wags have
already suggested locations anywhere
from Downing Street to Alaska, to the White

House and Libya. The odds, however,
are about one in 21 trillion that any
of us will be struck by a scrapyard

piece that has actually hurtled
through fields of quietly pulsing stars.
In a manner of speaking, that satellite

has been falling since it was launched
into the atmosphere in 1991, in the same
way mold begins its inevitable descent

upon the wheels of cheese just
lifted out of their cloth, the coarse
brown bricks of bread the baker

slides out of the oven. Even now,
though the season has not truly turned,
the walnut trees have begun to lose

their leaves. The smallest animals
are lining their nests with seed and paste,
preparing to bury themselves in the dark.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

beat pouring through the sound system
of this corner cafe, something in my
blood rises immediately to the warmth
of syllables that alternately quicken
(darting hummingbirds among the green)
then lengthen, humid as afternoons swung
from hammocks against the setting sun.
Even if I don’t understand the words
crooned in Portuguese, they unloose
the languid locked in my wrists,
the small of my back, the tight
ladders knotted in my spine.
The low cloud ceiling suspended
over this day transforms into sultry
stage setting: the gloom no longer
somber, only achingly melancholy;
the isolated call and response
amid the trees querulous, perhaps
even occasionally sweet— and
in between, those rich, syncopated
silences of expectation and release.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

‘Laughter was our only wealth.’ ~ Carlos Bulosan, “My Father Goes to Court”

All these years, paisano, and it’s la misma
mierda de siempre: same old, same old,
and I don’t mean creative recycling. You’d think
by now we’d get a little more respect, a little more
credit, a little more of that bankable dream
for things we’ve actually done— My kumpadre
next door gets it. He’s not from the islands, but
like us, he knows (this is the way he puts it)
the trials of people of a certain pigmentation…
I might not be able to identify the birds that call
from inside the woods, that open their mouths all
at once from the inside of a dream; but I can see,
most vividly, how the purple asters slowly unclench
beneath overcast skies. The signs have been appearing
for a good long while. Just as Carlos wrote,
the cities are burning. The faithful are marching
with schoolchildren in the streets. The women
marrying women and the men marrying men
drink wine on the hillside. The citizens have pitched
their tents in the park to steal back the laughter
the rich tried to take while they thought they slept.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.