from a mine in chile
a word is surfacing
a phrase is taking flight
love
is lifting story

The Something

Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one
With difficulty,
Swaying on the front porch,
While pointing at something
In the gray distance.

You see nothing, eh?
Neither do I, Mr. Milkman.
I better hit you once or twice over the head
With this fine old prop,
So you don’t go off muttering

I saw something!

Cameo Appearance

I had a small, nonspeaking part
In a bloody epic. I was one of the
Bombed and fleeing humanity.
In the distance our great leader

Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating our great leader?
That’s me there, I said to the kiddies.
I’m squeezed between the man
With two bandaged hands raised
And the old woman with her mouth open
As if she were showing us a tooth

That hurts badly. The hundred times
I rewound the tape, not once
Could they catch sight of me
In that huge gray crowd,
That was like any other gray crowd.

Trot off to bed, I said finally.
I know I was there. One take
Is all they had time for.
We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,
And then they were no more
As we stood dazed in the burning city,
But, of course, they didn’t film that.

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

We were sitting in the study in the wee hours
you on the couch
me leaning back in the office chair
our quiet conversation matching the stillness of the evening.

I could see through the hall to the kitchen,
into view stepped the King of Rats
he halted when our eyes met
holding for some moments.

Snake-like, his tail wrapped several times around the room.
His regal gaze, considered me with no trace of fear
while mine was possibly one of surprise
and slight supplication.

Unhurried he stepped off
left the room and went on up the hall
– I did not follow.
You asked me who I’d seen
yet in yours eyes I saw you did not want the answer.

Later, servant like – I mopped the kitchen floor,
upon return – chambers would be ready.

With each sweep of the mop I heard them amplifying:
– a rifle-crack of hardened wire
– a snap of neck-bones breaking
– an aftermath of silence

Sounds of uprising.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

I put my lips to your face
I make that puckering suckering noise
and breathe in old skin.
Your face changes colour.
Becomes pink with new complexion.

Your mother calls.
You can’t tell her about this.
Instead you tell her, ten, for coffee.

After coffee. At shopping. She remarks,
‘my daughter is so very beautiful’
The salesman nods in agreement.
She purchases a new appliance.
It matches the colour of everything;
it’s the most powerful and efficient vacuum in the world.

She is happy. She brings it home with us. Plugs it into the socket.
It sucks up everything, including the paint from the walls,
the curtains from the window and the photos from the mantlepiece.

Your mother is pleased, it’s everything the salesman said it would be.
She leaves. And then we notice,
Along with the furnishings, it has sucked us both into the black of its belly.

And so surrounded by the comforts of home we start a new life together.

You remark: ‘one day, we’ll be very happy’

However it’s so dark I can’t see your face.

But then the phone rings.

It’s your mother.

She wants to know how we’re settling in.