Series: Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2014-15

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The future is a bride
crossing a footbridge
lined with votive lights
near midnight, knowing
there isn’t much time.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

When the pillars came down
and the foundation shook
us out of our self-absorption,
we promised: if love is never lost
and change is always constant,
we would not calculate the rent
only to declare it wanting.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What was it he needed to read? There was a book on one
of the shelves. He only remembered the cover was green.

88 keys, 11 octaves. After daily exercises,
the lid came down on a felt runner of green.

The first year is paper, the eighth bronze, the twelfth
silk or linen; the sixteenth, a candlestick silvery-green.

What trees grew in front of our first house? One
shed only flame-colored leaves, the other green.

One arrow struck the girl, the other struck the god. He pursued her,
even as her feet grew roots, her arms leafed over with green.

Near the water, there used to be a house of quarantine. On a short
stretch of road, broken shells in the gravel amid tufts of green.

Should your mind quietly open that side door and leave, what
will you remember of us, of our days greener than green?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

We need less than fifty characters, but be sure to get the depth and breadth and the number of years of your experience covered.

Please identify where you obtained your training certificates.

Please explain why the tilde is where it is in your name.

Please explain your name and title, when and where acquired, and its importance in the general pecking order of things.

There is a short form bio, and a long form. We always prefer the short, but include everything we might possibly need for future reference and duplication.

Please provide the names and addresses of at least five referees, and their most recent sightings in public media.

When you are done, engage the Social Capital meter on the lower left of the page in order to generate your score.

The green bar indicates good standing and health in your organization and our conglomerates at large. The brown bar indicates dubious areas that may require further investigation.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Listen, this is not a joke
or a passing fancy.
A moment can feel ripe
even when it appears with an undercurrent
of foreboding. I don’t know where it comes from:
I don’t see it but can tell you
with utter conviction
that there is a second sky
where everything we’ve ever wished for
has grown roots. Like tendrils,
like the roots of mangrove trees,
they’ve thickened from being submerged
in the syrup of longing.
Then one day, an opening appears.
You feel its magnetic prodding
as you make your way, as your craft
comes nearer and nearer and finally
the shapes of dream villages
rise up to offer fields, hills,
a barn, a room where you might bring
your heavy suitcase and set it down.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Looking around for gifts at the antique
market, I tell you about the door
that swung those many years ago;

and I, not knowing you
were following behind:
running child, made

momentarily breathless by the smack
of my thoughtless passage— I’m rueful
still, though we know of such things

as accident, as what was never
willful or intended. I touch
gilt-edged books on shelves,

their marbled papers, their worn
cloth cases: in one, a verse sings
of a wilderness made tenable, made

bearable by the beloved’s presence:
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou…
and it is possible to endure all

that is or might be difficult.
So we pause at trays of vintage
photographs, gently handling the past—

Red-tinted, fragile, stemmed:
glassware and a box of thin
ceramic thimbles. Faceted

crystal dishes just shallow enough
for finger and thumb to gather
traceries of salt for scattering

on meat at the dinner table—
And I admire the snowy yokes
of infants’ christening dresses,

their thin laundered white
punctuated with asterisks
of threaded silk: who knows

the names of their stitches? But o,
what matter any loss or ruin from which
these finds were after all gleaned?

They live again: clear amber light
globes strung on chains, sleds with red
metal runners, songs whose words

the needle will trace faithfully
around the turn-table— And yes,
the things of this world

might fall away but love,
love is always its own sweet,
persistent palimpsest.

~ for Ina

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.