1.
Before sunrise, you listen for deer beyond
the gate: no signs of turkeys roosting on branches,
no black bear overturns garbage bins
along the street. The day glimmers
like waves undulating with the tide:
you toss another yellow cedar log
into the woodstove on the float house;
a great blue heron flaps its wings,
settles on the railing outside the window;
a thin low cloud of smoke hangs over the bay.
When you least expect it, your field
of vision tears, and an underlying landscape
reveals a radiating moment in time.
Today you put aside the newspaper,
soak strawberry plants in a garden bed;
yet, standing on land, you feel the rise
and fall of a float house, how the earth
under your feet is not fixed but moves with the tide.
2.
Searching for lightning petroglyphs, I stumble
onto a rattlesnake skin between rocks—
at dusk, soldiers set up machine guns
near the entrance to the Taj; others lay
a wall of sandbags—and tense when
a snake glides past my feet—a cow
lumbers through a crowded street,
while a one-armed girl panhandles
at a blinking red light—relax when
a tail without rattles slips into a crevice—
a vendor sells dates and mangoes; my eyes
sting in the soot-laden cardamom air—
when I stop at a pair of zigzag petroglyphs
and ponder if they are lightning or snakes,
I look up at a sandstone temple with chariots
and war elephants carved in the first tier;
above, a naked woman pulls a thorn from her heel;
higher up, a man and woman entwine.
3.
You pick grapes from a street vendor
when an ambulance packed with explosives
detonates in a crowd; while I was weeding
in the garden, a fire ant crawled up my jeans
and blistered my leg. I gaze at the white trunks
of aspens and shrinking patches of snow
on the grass; no one can read the script
of Rongorongo, yet we know the urge to carve
with a shark’s tooth. The warmth of sunlight
radiates from a stone wall: a wall formed
of hewn words, fitted without mortar—
piano music wafted like frankincense smoke—
each word, a meteor leaving a track.
The shift from opacity to transparency’s
a form of sunrise; at 5 am you step outside
to catch a lunar eclipse; I recall patches
of moonlight rippling down the hallway;
now we are X, collapsing space, collapsing time.
4.
Our bodies by firelight—
apple blossoms unfolding at the tips of branches—
aroma of candlelight in the room—
spruce trees, black, against a lightening sky—
leafing willow swaying in the backyard—
a moment of red tulips—
navel orange slices on a plate—
squares of dark chocolate—
eddies in a river—
a sword razors a leaf coming downstream—
a dog leaps between slats of a fence—
rips a gate off its hinges—
ring, ring, ring, ring, ring—
scent of blackthorn oil—
these rings we’ve worn and worn into sunrise—
5.
Along the shore, bald eagles nest in the yellow cedars—
my clothes reek of cedar smoke—
I wrap clothes around glass jars of king salmon in my knapsack—
standing on a dock, I board a float plane—
floaters in my eyes, wherever I go—
wherever you go, you cannot travel faster than light—
synapses firing in my body are a form of light—
threads of fugitive dye entangled in neural firings—
scent of summer in the blackening leaves—
a black bear swipes a screen door and ransacks a kitchen—
we ransack the past and discover action at a distance—
entangled waves of near and far—
a photon fired through a slit behaves like a wave—
we inhale, and our lungs oxygenate a cosmos—
a fire breaks out of the secret depths of the earth—
revel in the beauty of form.
6.
A ring-necked pheasant forages along the road,
while a purple orchid blooms by the window;
when distance collapses, a blood-red
strawberry bursts in your mouth;
you mark the rise and fall of your lungs,
blood coursing to your fingertips and toes;
when you consider gasoline mixed with sea water,
a torch flares out of the past into present:
you dip your brush in the ink of existence
and daub words that blacken, burst into flame—
a child in a boat gnaws stale bread.
Standing in an orchard, listening, aching
at the stars, I hear water drip off
stalactites and splash onto a cavern floor;
by daylight, the apple trees are covered
with blossoms; yet, now, in the dark,
I experience a wave of moonlight
glittering sheets of thin ice bobbing out in the bay.
from NER 40.1 (2019)